New Zealand seeks to boost education cooperation with Vietnam
New Zealand seeks to boost education cooperation with Vietnam
Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s minister of finance, signed several memorandums of understanding on education, forestry and agriculture during his recent visit to Vietnam. The cooperation between the two nations will help Vietnam become more competitive, even as laborers fear the loss of jobs to automation.
Almost every job will be affected in some way by changes in technology, but the most important thing New Zealand and Vietnam can do is prepare people for the change, which requires education and skill development, he told the Saigon Times.
“It won’t be a matter of going to schools, university and that’s it. You will need to keep retraining throughout your life and making sure that the young people have a range of skills,” he added.
After releasing a special report on the effects of the 4th industrial revolution on the labor market, New Zealand has invested in many resources and supported training courses for young people. The government has funded education and training for workers as well.
The country also provides a number of targeted programs for various groups in need of more support.
Moreover, New Zealand has just begun creating an industry transformation map, which looks at the whole industry to determine the needs of laborers and the market over the next 20-30 years. On that basis, it will provide skills training and programs that fit these needs for both growing and declining industries.
In Vietnam, according to a recent study by the International Labor Organization (ILO), as many as five million workers are at high risk of losing their jobs by 2020 because of artificial intelligence, which may replace laborers with robots.
The quality of Vietnamese human resources stands at only 3.79 out of 10 points, ranking the country 11th out of 12 countries surveyed in Asia. Moreover, Vietnamese workers lack the necessary skills in foreign languages, information technology, teamwork and communication.
Over the next 20 years, more than half of the workers in five Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, may lose their jobs, with those in the textile and garment sector being the most vulnerable.
The ILO’s study shows that most of the workers in the apparel sector are from Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, with 64%, 86% and 88% of them, respectively, likely to lose their jobs to automation.
“The first priority is to raise the importance of vocational education,” said Robertson. “In New Zealand, people might think that you are really successful when you go to university, but you can be very successful in vocational education, and we need more people in there. So there are areas that all countries need to support and invest in.”
The development of the national curriculum, especially for the IT sector, where Vietnam excels, is important.
