Hanoi (VNA) – 𝄹Despite impressive achievements, in order to make digital transformation more effective, the education sector still needs to overcome many barriers.

Digital transformation in education: Barriers to overcome

An inadequate legal corridor, lack of funding, lack of consistency and data linkage as well as the operation and management of electronic records are the barriers discussed by localities that hold back the digital transformation process.

Software gaps

Management software has been deployed in most educational institutions, but it is still difficult to connect and share data. The systems have yet to bring into full play the effectiveness of educational management. How to use these pieces of software to connect with the local education database and the citizen database of the police is a matter of concern for many education and training departments. Nguyen Van Hung, Deputy Director of Thai Nguyen provincial Department of Education and Training, said the locality is currently using two databases, which make it difficult to handle all of the statistics. “We really hope to have a common platform, a unified school database system across the country to create synchronization and build a common database of the Ministry of Education and Training,” Hung noted.

Half-way digitization due to lack of legal corridor

The switch to digital records and digital signatures also create difficulties for cities as the legal corridor is not complete. Nguyen Tran Thanh, an expert from the Department of Education and Training of southern Binh Duong province, said the province is using electronic school profiles for local students. However, as requested by the Department of Information and Communications, teachers must print out the profiles to sign, then continue to scan and save. "This is very time-consuming, and goes against the goal of implementing digital transformation," said Thanh. He suggested the Ministry of Education and Training issue clear regulations and guidelines on whether teachers' electronic school profiles need to be signed or just need to be signed by the principal. Regarding digital signatures of teachers, the departments of Education and Training also poses financial difficulties as there are a large number of educators, while the service price difference is huge. In Bac Ninh province, a representative of the Department of Education and Training said the price offered by suppliers is from 500,000 VND to 1 million VND per signature a year. Multiplied by the number of teachers, this costs very large.  

Budget challenges

In addition to the above barriers, the difficulty most localities face when promoting digital transformation in education is funding, especially in disadvantaged areas. Acknowledging funding as one of the major challenges for the sector, Nguyen Son Hai - Director of the Information Technology Department under the Ministry of Education and Training said investment for applying information technology and digital transformation in education is still limited. Without proper attention to investment, the mobilization of social resources will remain ineffective. In addition, another big challenge is the awareness of officers, teachers and employees in the education sector to the importance of digital transformation. Facing a series of difficulties and challenges, Hai said that the Ministry of Education and Training will need to develop a variety of solutions to promote digital transformation in the coming time./.