Keywords: advanced political theory training.

The advanced political theory training program of Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics with particular contents and knowledge is indispensable baggage for every cadres and civil servant because advanced political theory training aims at strengthening their political mettle and ideological stand, forming a strategic vision and thinking, equipping leadership and management skills, providing specialized and practical knowledge, etc. for cadres and civil servants. Thus, advanced political theory training has an extremely important meaning in building a pool of cadres, meeting the requirements of the current practical situation of which the first is to deal with the political tasks within the working unit.

Surveying and evaluating the influence of the cadres and civil servants in dealing with the political tasks at their office after their advanced political theory training at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics is necessary. After learning advanced political theory at the Academy, what changes the learners make in operating, managing, and dealing with their assigned tasks in their working units is still the question nowadays. When looking at the advanced political theory program, certain subjects are evaluated. The issues to consider include what important contributions to dealing with the learner’s assigned tasks by the learners, how many cadres and civil servants are changed after advanced political theory training, and whether they work at the old position or get rotated, promoted, or appointed to a new position.

The content of the article helps clarify the above issues.

Firstly, suitability in arranging job by specialty

Our survey results show that the jobs assigned to the cadres and civil servants with the right trained specialty account for more than 90%. Only nearly 9% of the cadres and civil servants are not arranged with their trained specialty. When we interviewed and discussed this number, the answer we received from those who did not undertake jobs in their trained specialty and their leaders was that the suitable jobs had been undertaken by the others. Those who were undertaking such political tasks were doing their appropriate specialty, and they were also the cadres and civil servants who could do those jobs well. None of them said that they were not arranged with the right specialty because they were not qualified for such jobs. As a result, most of the cadres and civil servants before and after learning advanced political theory at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics are matched with the jobs suitable to their strong capacity. Such arrangement will help promote the full resources of the units, avoiding wastefulness in current human resource training.

Secondly, career mobility after advanced political theory training

As for the change of jobs and positions after learning advanced political theory at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, the collected survey result is that more than 55% were “changed” and more than 45% “unchanged”. This is absolutely a rising career mobility. That is, after returning to their working units after learning advanced political theory for 1 month to 5 years, the cadres and civil servants changed their jobs or got appointed to higher positions. There were different reasons for this change rather than having learned the advanced political theory or having had the advanced political theory degree. We also conducted interviews for further information, but we didn’t receive satisfactory answers.

Thirdly, promotion of strong capacity after advanced political theory training

On evaluating work effect after advanced political theory training at the Academy, the survey result has showed that the majority evaluated that they displayed their strong capacity well and very well with the percentage of 99.2%. In fact, the cadres and civil servants sent to the Academy for advances political theory learning were carefully chosen at the grassroots level. Participating in this training program at the school named after President Ho Chi Minh is a great pride and honor for any cadre and civil servant. These cadres and civil servants are all capable, and they have positions or are in the contingent of the leaders at their units. Hence, after being equipped, added, and updated with more knowledge of leadership and management, and consolidated with political mettle and ideological stand, they all have the spirit to cultivate themselves and strive for better. Subsequently, only 0.8% of the interviewees gave the answer “Average” to the question on how to bring into play their capacity.

Fourthly, degrees of the learner’s participation in the activities of the unit before and after learning advanced political theory

Every cadre and civil servant in general must perform various activities and tasks. However, on researching the activities of the working units, the research group only chose 8 main activities to examine the idea of the former advanced political theory students with the 5 ascending degree evaluation scale: “Never”, “Rarely”, “Sometimes”, “Frequently”, and “Always”. The 8 main activities chosen for survey included specialized activities, activities of the Party, activities of other unions (trade union, youth union, veteran), social and community activities (charity, environment protection, etc.), and the classes for specialty and professional training, soft skill training, foreign language training and political theory learning. More specific and detailed tasks will be discussed in the section on the effect of the implementation of cadres and civil servants after learning advanced political theory at the system of the Academy. For easy observation and comparison, the research group will arrange the survey percentage of the activities in the same table with two columns – BEFORE and AFTER – related to learning advanced political theory:

The survey results show that the degrees of participation in the activities of the organization of cadres and civil servant are clearly changed in general compared with the time BEFORE and AFTER learning advanced political theory. The change mostly takes place in the degree of “Frequent” and “Always” (the two highest degrees in the evaluation scale). This change tends to increase clearly in all activities. This explains the fact that AFTER learning advanced political theory, the cadres and civil servants participated in the unit activities more than BEFORE. The lowest increase rate of 2% belongs to the criterion 9.7 “Participation in the classes of foreign language training and improvement”. Accordingly, it can be seen that most of the cadres and civil servants rarely participated in the classes for foreign language improvement after learning advanced political theory. This is understandable because the units sending the cadres and civil servants to the classes are mostly located in the provinces, rural districts, and communes or in the ministries, sectors, and committees that do not have high requirements for using foreign languages. The activity with the highest rate of 25% belongs to the criterion 9.2: “Party activities.” Thus, it is understood that a lot of cadres and civil servants were assigned with more tasks related to Party work after learning advanced political theory. The degree of participation in the activities chosen for survey increased by 11% on average. Apart from the highest and lowest increase in activities as above, the degrees of the subject’s participation in the activities increased gradually as follows: the classes for soft skill training changed by 4%, social and community activities (charity, environment protection, etc.) changed by 7%, the classes for professional improvement and other union activities of the unit (trade union, youth union, veteran) changed by 11%, classes for political theory learning changed by 14%, and specialized activities of the unit changed by 17%. This is the overall picture of the degrees of participation in some major and fundamental activities by the cadres and civil servants BEFORE and AFTER learning advanced political theory at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics. Once again, these degrees of participation are affirmed with the average values calculated below.

Fifthly, the degrees of influence on the effect of implementing the specific tasks at the working unit after graduating from the advanced political theory program                

Through the self-evaluating result of effect of implementing the political tasks at the working units of the former advanced political theory learners, it can be seen that no one is evaluated at the lowest degree, “Very bad,” of the evaluation scale in implementing the political tasks. The second lowest degree, “Bad,” also belongs to the 3 criteria of 5, 6, and 10 at the very small rate of 0.7% and 0.9%, respectively. At the “Average” degree, there are low evaluating values in all criteria. The criterion with the highest “Average” evaluation belongs to the task of “union work organization implementation” at 8%, followed by “union work consultancy” at 8. 3%.

Generally, the effect of implementing the political tasks is mostly evaluated as “Fair” and “Good” by the former advanced political theory learners. This shows that the cadres and civil servants sent for learning advanced political theory are capable of fulfilling the assigned political tasks. Besides that, they are also the cadres and civil servants with good moral quality, high responsibility, and firm revolutionary stance. With such survey results, the Party, State, and locality can completely put their trust in the cadres and civil servants today. The criterion “specialized task implementation” received mostly the answer “Good” with 74%, and is followed by the task “specialized activity consultancy” accounting for nearly 74%. Thus, specialized tasks are the top prioritized political task of the cadres and civil servants. Next, the criterion “work regulation organization” is evaluated as “Good” with nearly 71% of the former learners.

“Strategic planning” is the criterion evaluated as “Fair” and “Good” by more than 90% of the former learners.  However, the “Good” evaluation accounts for more than 40%. This is the criterion with the lowest “Good” evaluation in the 16 criteria for the effect of implementing the political tasks by the former advanced political theory learners. The criterion of the second lowest “Good” evaluation is “Policy planning”. It can be said that the two activities “Strategic planning” and “Policy planning” are major macro activities for each agency and unit. To participate in these activities, the leaders of the units often select personnel very strictly.

To evaluate the attitude, position, thought, and responsibility of the former learners on implementing political tasks after graduating from the advanced political theory course, the research group provided 8 criteria for the former students to evaluate themselves. In general, the received evaluation results are rather high. 7/8 criteria are evaluated as “Good” with more than 82%. The criterion with the highest “Good” evaluation belongs to “Reinforcement of revolutionary position” with nearly 88%. The next is “accountability at work” with nearly 87%. The following criteria are “the spirit of learning and following the example of president Ho Chi Minh” with nearly 86% and “the spirit to strive and train personality” with more than 85%. The criterion “scientific view cultivation” has the lowest “Good” evaluation with 71%. Despite being the criterion with the lowest “Good” evaluation; this is still a very satisfactory figure showing the achievement by the former advanced political theory learners.

In general, given the collected survey results, it can be asserted that most of the cadres and civil servants became more mature in all aspects, applied the acquired knowledge to work and life effectively, and fulfilled the assigned political tasks better after learning advanced political theory at the training institutions of the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics.

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References:

1. Hoang Anh: Some solutions to improving the quality of advanced political theory training at Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, Proceedings of national scientific seminar, Political Theory Publishing House, Hanoi, 2016.

2. Hoang Anh: Organizing advanced political theory training and cultivation at the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, Journal of Political Science, issue 12- 2018.

3. Tran Thi Hoai: Appraisal evaluation of the education program, Doctoral thesis on education management, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2009.

Assoc. Prof., Dr. Hoang Anh

Department of Training Management,

Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics