Both Hue and Senator Tim Ayres, who is Assistant Minister for Trade and Assistant Minister for Manufacturing of Australia, agreed that education and training cooperation has always been a pillar and a "bright spot" in the two country’s relations.
In 1974 – just one year after the two set up their diplomatic ties, Australia granted the first scholarships to Vietnamese students, and since then more than 80,000 Vietnamese students have completed their study here.
With around 30,000 students currently studying in Australia, Vietnam ranks fourth in terms of the number of students in the country.
Appreciating Vietnam’s renewal process and its goal of becoming a high-income country by 2045, Tim Ayres emphasised that this target can be achieved only with highly skilled workers, and cooperation in education and training will play an important role.
Therefore, Australian higher education institutions are also looking to Vietnam to seek new opportunities and expand collaboration with the Vietnamese workforce, not only encouraging Vietnamese students to study in Australia, but also vice versa, to learn from each other's experiences, he added.
The Vietnamese NA Chairman said that bilateral cooperation in education and training helps not only develop human resources to serve rapid and sustainable economic development of each country, but also connect the two cultures and foster the bilateral friendship.
He stressed the need to increase the number of joint training programmes between Vietnamese higher education institutions and high-ranked ones of Australia, with focus on science and technology and PhD training; speed up the exchange of students and lecturers as well as promoting research cooperation between Australian and Vietnamese universities; and encourage more prestigious Australian universities to open branches in the Southeast Asian country.
Attention should also be paid to supporting the teaching and learning of English language in Vietnam, he added.
He expressed his belief that this forum will open up a new stage for bilateral education cooperation, thus contributing to enhancing the Vietnam-Australia strategic partnership.
On this occasion, NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue and Australian Ambassador to Vietnam Andrew John Lech Goledzinowski witnessed the exchange of 12 documents and memoranda of understanding on cooperation in education and training between the two countries’ universities.
