An Emerging Dragon: Vietnamese Education After Resolution 29

In the last seven years since the implementation of Resolution 29, Vietnam’s education has seen many encouraging results. The results can be categorized in terms of the eight main policy thrusts mentioned earlier.

5.5.1

Enhancing Innovation in Education Management

Since the 2013 reform, the Education Ministry of Vietnam has implemented several additional reform laws, which are outlined in the 2020 report Evaluation of implementation of the 2011–2020 education development strategy (VNIES, 2020) Since one of the major thrusts of this chapter is exploring the impact of the Resolution 29, noting these recent amendments is necessary for us to mark the changes in the Vietnamese education system.

The National Assembly promulgated the Education Law (amended) in 2019 and the Higher Education Law (amending and supplementing several articles) in 2018. The Prime Minister issued the National Education System towards openness, continuity and lifelong learning. The Prime Minister promulgated the National Qualification Framework to ensure the equivalence of training levels and qualifications. However, the system of legal normative documents on education is not consistent. There are still contradictions and overlaps between sub-law documents (VNIES, 2020).

McAleavy, Ha, and Fitzpatrick identified a policy delivery challenge in Vietnam education system. Primary schools and lower secondary schools are supported and monitored by a district-level Bureau of Education and Training, whereas government high schools are supervised in a similar way by a provincial-level Department of Education and Training. Education department officials are expected to explain policy to schools and provide both support and monitoring to ensure fidelity of implementation. According to the regulations, the process is simultaneously both ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up.’ Under the circumstances, management in schools becomes rigid, inflexible, and inactive (McAleavy et al., 2018).

In a recent policy note (WB, 2020), the World Bank also offered an in-depth analysis and assessment of Vietnam’s higher education system, thereby giving recommendations on policies to promote higher education system governance. They stated that the higher education system in Vietnam is highly fragmented across many dimensions, including: (1) Vietnam does not have a single body responsible for the entire tertiary education and research system, (2) the existence of several hundred public research institutes operating independently from the universities, (3) multiple by-laws issued in recent years are seen as contributing to the complexity, fragmentation and inconsistencies of the regulatory framework, (4) the role played by MOET in initiating reforms and setting the long-term vision is undermined by inadequate capacity, resources and information, (5) no unified higher education information management system (HEMIS), which hinders evidence-based decision-making from all stakeholders.

5.5.2

Promoting Teacher Professional Development

At the time of Resolution 29, most teachers in Vietnam were undertrained to practice the changes in curriculum, pedagogical methods, testing, and management put in place with the educational overhaul. In the hopes of addressing these issues, Vietnam has developed various teacher training programs via in-site training courses as well as online platforms (WB, 2016). However, after the first semester of implementation, there are still many shortcomings. Currently, teachers do not fully understand the innovation objectives and are not given preparation time (VNIES, 2021). To that end, we believe that the ideology around teacher training needs to be restructured.

As it stands, the MOET has enacted professional standards for teachers, school principals, and lecturers at pedagogical universities. MOET also proposed raising training qualifications for teachers in the new Education Law 2019. Specifically, primary school teachers will have to have a four-year university degree instead of a three-year degree as before (VNIES, 2020).

Some elements of teacher professional development have been successful because of Resolution 29, however. Teacher conditions remain quite favorable, with relatively low pupil to teacher ratios (PTRs) and class sizes that are lower than set standards, especially compared with OECD averages (MOET, 2020). National averages hide regional and provincial disparities. Teacher shortages are not evenly distributed across the country, with some shortages affecting disadvantaged regions more than other regions. Teacher shortage is particularly striking in primary schools offering 2 sessions a day and in upper secondary schools. There is also evidence that teachers are in short supply in kindergartens (MOET, 2020). As reported in an interview with Dr. Nguyen Thi Mai Hoa, Permanent Member of Assembly’s Committee for Culture, Education Youth, Adolescents and Children, there have been substantial efforts in Vietnam to promote the guidance, implementation, and preparation of teacher professional development policies by the Ministry of Education and Training.

5.5.3

Innovating Content and Teaching Methods, Examination, Testing and Education Assessment

Major milestones during this period of education include the approval of a new competency-based curriculum, supported by The World Bank Group and launched in 2016. The curriculum was officially approved in 2018, and will be officially implemented from 2020 (MOET, 2018b). This new national curriculum aims to alter the outdated teaching and learning methods—which were formerly structured around the transmission of knowledge and memorization of facts—with technology-based education to equip students with hands on skills necessary for the twenty-first century. Compulsory subjects were reduced and complemented with optional and integrated subjects and theme activities (CPTC, 2018).

This is also the first time that Vietnam allowed the application of the policy of “one curriculum—many textbooks.” However, the implementation in the first year met many difficulties. From the fact that teachers have not been fully trained, leading to incorrect understanding of the role of textbooks in the new program. After only 8 weeks, one of the textbooks was rejected by the public, and later discontinued. Content aside, the main cause identified was the inability of teachers to respond to reforms (VNIES, 2021).

Assessment reform at primary level is considered a highlight in the period 2013–2020. The MOET issued Circular 30 in 2014 and Circular 22 in 2016, which guide schools and teachers in innovating the assessment of students. Instead of evaluating the students based on the results, the comprehensive assessment aims to encourage and motivate students. The participatory assessment process is not meant to be compared to other students, but rather focuses on the progress in each student’s performance. When launched in 2014, the process has been challenged due to concerns about the feasibility by public opinion, schools, and teachers. However, after two years of implementation, there have been obvious changes in primary education. The guiding principles of learning and teaching at primary schools now are what the students learned and what they could do, rather than their grades (VNIES, 2017).

The high school graduation examination and the university entrance examinations have also been radically renovated in the period of 2013–2020. To begin, the high school graduation examination and the university entrance examination have been combined, to become the national high school examination. The examination is held locally, to reduce, the burden of candidates who must travel to major cities to take university exams, thus reducing financial pressure on parents and society generally (Nguyen et al., 2020).

5.5.4

Increasing Investment of Resources and Renewing Education Finance Distribution Mechanism

One of the key elements of achievement in the Vietnamese education sector is the consistently high expenditure on education, and the focus on primary and basic literacy education to ensure universalization, which specifically benefits the less advantaged regions. Such investment has yielded positive outcomes, with the overall rate of return to schooling in Vietnam surpassing those of most nearby countries (Thanh et al., 2018).

The share of total public expenditure in the education sector has always been among the largest of social and economic sectors for Vietnam; the country also ranks high among East Asia countries, with top sharing of public expenditure on education, approximately equal to Malaysia’s. Meanwhile, the figures for Singapore and The Philippines are about 2.5–3%, under 4% for Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan, and 4.5–5% for Thailand and South Korea. It is worth noting, however, that these figures refer to the public expenditure as proportion of GDP only, and the total amount of education investment in Vietnam remains relatively low (Kataoka et al., 2020).

In recent years, the Vietnamese government’s investment on education has been increasing, maintaining around 20% of total budget expenditures (GSO, 2016, 2017). However, the government expenditure on education, usually high at governmental central level, proved to be ineffective when spending autonomy was granted to local authorities. This is the result of the decentralization movement, whereby much of the responsibility of education decision making is shifted to provincial level authorities. In the recent higher education policy note by World Bank (WB, 2020), as of 2013, 64% of total expenditure on education was distributed by local government, whose spending priorities vary substantially across the country. This figure was not improved much in recent years (Viet et al., 2020).

5.5.5

Promoting Science, Technology and Innovation Performance

Despite remarkable progress in the quantity of research output, Vietnam remains at the bottom of benchmarking country list in the recent policy note by World Bank (WB, 2020). In terms of quantity, the number of citable documents per one million inhabitants of Vietnam is higher than that of the Philippines, but lower than that of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. In terms of quality and impact, Vietnam ranks bottom in the list.

Measures of technology transfer indicate that the contribution of Vietnam’s universities to the national innovation system is also very low, at 1.24 patents per million of population, lower than that of Philippines (1.35), Thailand (3.16) and less than even 1% of China (233). On innovation capacity, Vietnam ranked 45th among 126 countries in 2018. This is an improvement of Vietnam from the rank of 64th in 2008.

According to World Bank report on Science, Technology and Innovation in Vietnam, this low performance is identified because of inadequate and inefficient financing, insufficient research talent, limited links to the global research frontier, low level university-industry linkage, and under-developed research/ICT infrastructure (WB, 2019).

5.5.6

Fostering Educational Development for Disadvantaged Areas, Ethnic Minorities and Social Policy Beneficiaries

To ensure equal access to educational opportunities, promoting universalization of general education matters. Vietnam achieved universal primary education in 2000 and universal lower secondary education in 2010. One of the greatest achievements of Vietnam’s education over the past five years is the universalization of preschool education for all 5-year-old children. As of 2017, profound effects on the development of preschool education have been documented. Comparing to 2010, the school’s retention rate has expanded rapidly, with the enrollment rates of 5-year-old children rising by 13% to reach 99.96% in 2017 (MOET, 2018a).

Vietnam has made impressive strides regarding gender equity in education. While participation rates by female students have always been approximate to male counterparts at all study levels, over the past few years, researchers have found a reverse gender gap in enrollment and attainment rates, particularly regarding upper secondary level completion rates. However, there are still disparities in the quality of education between students in different target groups, especially, for students of ethnical minorities and students with disabilities (Vinh, 2019).

Improving educational access for ethnic minority children is the first policy priority, to be implemented by strengthening current government initiatives. One major leverage point is improving high-quality early-childhood education programs, especially by assigning teaching assistants proficient in the local mother languages in the beginning years of primary school to help facilitate the transition for children who do not speak Vietnamese at home. Another major factor is providing financial support—including cash transfer programs to households, subject to school attendance—to encourage children to attend upper secondary school. The enrollment numbers of ethnic minority students decreased dramatically from primary to tertiary level. These low educational attainment rates towards higher levels of study also seemed to be more potent for some specific groups of ethnic minorities (Dang & Glewwe, 2018).

Despite efforts to support students with disabilities, the outcomes have not been improved, because of lower enrollment population at higher education. According to statistics from 2016 to 2017 by UNICEF and GSO, only 1% children with disabilities are in a special school/classroom (UNICEF & GSO, 2018). The percentage of schools with suitable infrastructure and sanitation facilities for students with disabilities are 2.9% and 9.9%, respectively. Even though a quarter of children with disabilities aged 2–17 live in poor households with schooling opportunity of 21% lower than those without disabilities, only 55.5% benefit from tuition fee reduction or exemption.

5.5.7

Promoting Educational Research

Moving forward, the question Vietnamese policy makers and educators must ask themselves should be how to prepare learners for a fast-changing context and required skills sets. An education environment that favors innovation and creativity, particularly focusing on the role of lifelong learning and sustainable development of learners, is fundamental. The evolution of such a system must be based on research-informed policies, particularly research in the field of educational sciences. According to a bibliometric analysis from Clarivate Web of Science database between 1991 and 2018 (Hoang et al., 2019), even though academic research output in education is rather underdeveloped, we can still observe an upward pattern over the last ten years, which signifies a fertile prospect for education in the country moving forward.

The Government has assigned the Ministry of Education and Training to lead the national research program on educational science in the 2016–2020 period. According to reports, 49 national tasks have been identified to support the implementation of the objectives of Resolution 29. These assignments have made an important contribution to a wide range of legal normative tasks. According to the report of the Office of Educational Science National Program (ESNP, 2020), dozens of monograph book and hundreds of scientific articles have been published, and hundreds of conferences and seminars have been held. The program is expected to continue implementing phase 2 from 2021 to 2025.

5.5.8

Expanding International Cooperation in Education

International cooperation in education has been strongly promoted in the period 2013–2020. The number of overseas students has steadily increased, about 8–10% annually. The number of foreign students in Vietnam also doubled during this period, from 11,000 international students in 2013 to 21,000 international students in 2018. The number of Agreement scholarships awarded by Governments of other countries to Vietnamese students has also nearly doubled, from 862 scholarships granted in 2013 to 1446 scholarships granted in 2019 (Ly & Marginson, 2019).

The size of affiliate programs is also constantly expanding, with about 35,000 people studying each year. The number of foreign-invested educational institutions has expanded, from only two foreign-invested universities to five universities in 2017. To date, there are 29 high schools with foreign investment. FDI projects in education are stable in terms of total investment. However, ODA and non-refundable aid to education have decreased in recent years as Vietnam has entered the group of low middle-income countries. Accreditation of affiliate programs, or foreign educational institutions, remains difficult. There is not much cooperation on credit recognition and conversion with regional and international countries. Therefore, there are still many shortcomings surrounding the recognition of diplomas (DIC, 2019).