Creating happy schools

To raise awareness of the role of principals in building happy schools and creating a joyful and compassionate learning environment in Vietnam, the Vietnam General Education Innovation Support Fund (VIGEF) organized the workshop "Principals - Sowers of Happiness" on May 20th.

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To develop Ho Chi Minh City into a major center for education and training.Resolution 09 of the Politburo has set a very ambitious vision for Ho Chi Minh City, defining the goal of building the city into a major center for education and training, aiming for an advanced education system in the Asian region before 2030.

Building a model of happy schools is a major policy of the Ministry of Education and Training aimed at creating a healthy school culture and contributing to improving the overall quality of education for students in accordance with the spirit of Resolution 29 of the Party. The Vietnam Education Union has issued a document and launched a large-scale campaign throughout the sector to build the model of happy schools. Initially, the campaign has changed the perceptions of administrators and teachers, and more and more models of happy schools are emerging at various levels and in different regions across the country.

The workshop emphasized that building happy schools can be achieved effectively in any school through the changes made by the principal and their impact on the entire school. Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Dang Tu An, Director of the Vietnam General Education Innovation Support Fund, said: “To ensure sustainability and facilitate the widespread dissemination of the happy school model, the Vietnam General Education Innovation Support Fund has collaborated with the Vietnam Education Union to implement the Happy School Project with the support of Genetica Asia Joint Stock Company - Genetica ASIA. The project, “Principals - Sowers of Happiness,” aims to train and educate 10,000 general school principals with scientific knowledge and skills to successfully build a happy school model in their own educational institutions.”

Phase 1 of the project, which ran from May to November 2022, focused on training over 1,200 school principals from 7 provinces and cities, equipping them with the capacity to understand and spread positive energy to teachers in their schools. This, in turn, built a school environment where students truly found joy instead of the pressure of homework and grades.

From the perspective of Vietnam's human development goals, and considering the 2018 General Education Program, Associate Professor Dr. Le Huy Hoang, Deputy Head of the Education Department, Central Propaganda Department, believes that implementing the "happy school" initiative is a key element in building happy Vietnamese people. These qualities and competencies are linked to the 2018 General Education Program. Happy learning is about the balance and harmony between the following elements: Morality-Intellectual-Physical-Aesthetics; Qualities-Competencies; Textbooks-Practice (connecting knowledge with experience); Theory-Practice; General competencies-Specific competencies; Process-Results (linked to current assessment, valuing student progress during the learning process); Compulsory-Optional; Individual-Collective; National-Local; Learning-Playing; Following the Example-Creative; Individual-Cooperation; Guidance-Autonomy; Physical-Mental; Family-School-Society.