On January 22nd 2016, the Department of Teachers and Educational Administrators (DTEM) of the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in Vietnam launched the report of a study about the performance evaluation of teachers, which was supported by Belgium. The study was initiated as a result of the work done by the School Education Quality Assurance Programme (SEQAP) on the development of a lesson observation tool to assess effectiveness of training of teachers. The work on this tool attracted the interest of the leadership of the Ministry because they needed to establish a new procedure and a set of tools that can be used for independent evaluation of teachers. For that reason, MOET requested Belgium to support conducting a study that could link international experience in teacher evaluation with the current practice in Vietnam and the plans for teacher evaluation and development in the context of the ongoing education reform in Vietnam.

The result of the study is a set of recommendations for an improved procedure to evaluate teachers in Vietnam based on an evaluation of the current practice and some international examples. The report includes the following sections:

Section 1: Overview of teacher evaluation in Vietnam
Section 2: Overview of international practices in teacher evaluation (Singapore, UK (England), Canada (Ontario), Finland and Belgium (Flanders))
Section 3: Recommendations for Vietnam based on international experience

The study was conducted by Dr. Patrick Vander Weyden (Free University of Brussels & FocusUP, currently Country Programme Manager of VVOB in Cambodia) and Prof. Pham Van Hoan (dean at the Hanoi College of Education).

The launching event was opened by Mr. Hoang Duc Minh, the director of DTEM, and Mr. Geert Vansintjan, the development counselor at the Embassy of Belgium in Hanoi. Mr. Vansintjan emphasized in his opening speech that by supporting this study, Belgium wants to contribute to strengthening systems that provide support to teachers, teacher development and teacher management so the sustainable development goal of inclusive and equitable quality education can be achieved. On the short term, he hopes that the study will contribute to the evaluation and revision of the teacher standards that are currently used, in response to the demands of the education reform and the new curriculum.

The results of the study have already been taken onboard in the formulation of the Enhancing Teacher Effectiveness Programme (ETEP), the Government programme supported by a loan of World Bank that will address the reform of the teacher training and development system in Vietnam.