Conclusions and Lessons Learned

There are a number of lessons that have been learned from the research reported upon in this chapter. These are:

• Objective questions are better than opinion or reflective ones since respondents know what they have done but are more vague on what they are going to do or even what they may like to do.

• Training of interviewers must be improved to ensure good response.

• Enterprises should receive questionnaires in advance of interview and more than one visit should be made.

• The tracer survey with its objective question on whether the traced student has a job, what is his/her current salary, how long did it take to find a job are the most useful of the questions asked.

• A stumbling block has been tracing students. Each school Director should be encouraged to keep track of both short-term and long-term students. How to do this on a regular basis is problematic. The survey is expensive to carry out on a regular basis, to keep costs low 10% of students on graduation could be given a questionnaire to be filled out exactly one year after graduation. An incentive could be paid for each returned questionnaire, say the equivalent of $US5.

• Eliciting training needs is very problematic since enterprises are not good at replying to speculative questions, they invariably re-train whatever they find on the skills market, work attitude is as, if not more, important, as skill acquired.

• Key informant questionnaires must be administered independently, they cannot be entrusted to the school director, simply because the director will, quite naturally, always report in the best possible light for his/her school and real problems might well not be revealed.

• Open ended questions on types of course you would like to see etc. are difficult to analyze but it is even more difficult to start, apriori, with a suitable classification scheme

• All questionnaires need to be improved in the light of experience obtained. They are already useful instruments but some of the details need to be revised.

In terms of the effectiveness of the surveys there are a number of conclusions. First, these surveys were carried out mainly as training exercises for GDVT staff since the very short period of time and limited resources meant that large samples could not be selected nor could proper training and testing of questionnaires be carried out. Second, the main lesson learned from the three surveys was that it is clear that the most effective questions are ones that are objective in nature i.e. asking people what they have done is preferable to asking people what they think should be done. For instance, the salary earned and/or employment status of vocational school graduates discovered in the tracer survey is a, if not the most, powerful indicator of success of failure. This suggests that a key informant

survey, although useful, cannot replace objective information obtained from a well-carried out tracer survey.

Regarding labour market signalling there are two main number of observations. First, the survey approach adopted in Vietnam was a partial approach to labour market signalling.

For instance, neither wages by occupation nor rate of return analyses were used. This was simply because wage data by occupation are not currently available in Vietnam.

Second, labour market signalling provides information on current problems in the labour market and assesses opinions on potential future developments. However, no analysis is done of the future evolution of the labour market and the link between supply and demand of qualified manpower. Consequently, a mixture of labour market signalling, scenario analysis through modelling the labour market coupled with informed judgement whereby all partners are involved in assessing available evidence would likely prove to assist the most in untangling the manpower planning problem.

Appendix I: Selected Results from Key Informant Survey Table 1: Numbers of Respondents per Key School

Frequency Key School

Total Percent Industrial Secondary No.1

Haiphong Industry Secondary Training School for Road Constr.

Viet-Xo Technical Worker No.1

Table 2: What is your position?

Frequency

Table 3 Do you think that the Key School graduates find appropriate jobs after training?

Table 4 Do you think the training school should do more to help students find jobs?

Table 5: Do you think that the long-term courses (i.e. one or more years)at the Key School raise the future income or salary of the students compared with not taking the course by?

Table 6: Do you think that the short-term courses (i.e. one month to 11 months)at the Key School raise the future income or salary of the students compared with not taking the course by?

Table 7: Do you think that the training school should encourage private sector involvement?

Table 8. name of first course to be added by Key School name of first course to be

added

-car, motorbike, tractor repair 3 1 - - 1 - - - - - - - 1 -

-water supply 1 - - - 1 - - - - - - - - -

-Table 10. name of second course to be added name of second course to be

added

Table 11. name of course to be eliminated by Key School

-Appendix II: Selected results from Tracer Survey Table 1: Length of course attended

Frequency

Table 2: What is your monthly income range?

(‘000 VND $US1=14,000 VND)

Table 3. Course name by Your monthly income range (1,000 VND)?

Course name Total 200 or

-Excavator 5 2 - 1 - - 1 - - 390 1

Crane 7 - - - 1 2 2 2 - 1214

-Industrial garment 1 - - - - 1 - - - 900

-Table 4. Key schools by Your monthly income range (1,000 VND)?

Key schools Total 200 or

Table 5. Key schools by Current employment status

Key schools Total Employee

-Appendix III: Selected Results from Establishment Survey