Asia

Education in Vietnam

Very good on paper

ON SATURDAY morning, December 14th, America's secretary of state, John Kerry, will travel to Vietnam. One of his talking points, according to the State Department, will be the "empowering role of education”. But it seems like Vietnam has already taken the message.

On December 3rd, the OECD released the results from its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an exam administered every three years to 15- and 16-year-olds in dozens of countries. Vietnam recently joined the test for the first time, and it scored remarkably well—higher in maths than America and Britain, though not as high as Shanghai or Singapore. Nguyen Vinh Hien, a deputy minister for education, characterised Vietnam's overall 17th-place ranking out of 65 countries and economies as a pleasant “surprise.”

The PISA scores, as they are known, measured how a half-million students from randomly selected schools answered written and multiple-choice questions in a two-hour test. Mathematics was the primary focus, but students were also evaluated on reading, science and problem-solving. Coverage of the scores by the Western news media suggested that the impressive maths performance by Vietnam, where per-capita GDP is only about $1,600, was perhaps a bit humbling for education officials in Washington, London and other self-regarding world capitals.

What explains Vietnam's good score? Christian Bodewig of the World Bank says it reflects, among other positive things, years of investment in education by the government and a "high degree of professionalism and discipline in classrooms across the country”. But Mr Bodewig adds that the score may be impressive in part because so many poor and disadvantaged Vietnamese students drop out of school. The World Bank reports that in 2010 the gross enrolment rate at upper-secondary schools in Vietnam was just 65%, compared with 89% and 98% in America and Britain, respectively. South Korea's rate was 95%.

A chorus of Vietnamese education specialists say that Vietnam's PISA score does not fully reflect the reality of its education system, which is hamstrung by a national curriculum that encourages rote memorisation over critical thinking and creative problem-solving. "Every child in this country learns the same thing," and nationwide tests merely reinforce the intellectual homogeneity that results, in the lament of To Kim Lien, the director of the Centre for Education and Development, a Vietnamese non-profit in Hanoi. Ms Lien reckons that instead of catalysing educational reform, the score might provide a convenient excuse for complacency in matters of policy. And the old-fashioned, inward-looking Ministry of Education and Training, she adds, is a past master at complacency.

Another systemic problem is a general lack of “integrity” in Vietnam's education sector, in the words of Nguyen Thi Kieu Vien of the Global Transparency Education Network, a new initiative of Transparency International, a watchdog based in Berlin. In a recent survey the organisation found that 49% of Vietnamese respondents perceived their education sector to be "corrupt" or "highly corrupt”. The percentage was higher than that found in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia. Corruption is plainly evident at elite Vietnamese schools, where slots for pupils are routinely sold for $3,000 each. Yet it also exists on a smaller scale, in subtler forms. Many Vietnamese teachers hold extra tuitions, outside of regular school hours, for a small fee of between $2.50 and $5 per lesson. Not all parents can afford to pay these fees, and so the practice tends to exacerbate inequality.

In November some top-ranking national officials passed a resolution calling for reform in the education sector. Kim Ngoc Minh, an education researcher in Hanoi, says the resolution is the most comprehensive and ambitious in a generation. Other education specialists however wonder whether the resolution, which calls for reform in broad stokes, will translate into actual policy changes.

Actual changes are badly needed. In 2008, researchers from Harvard reported that Vietnam's higher-education system was in "crisis", and that it lagged far behind the systems of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, to say nothing of those in China, Taiwan and South Korea. As a warning, they pointed to the comparative lack of articles published by Vietnamese researchers in peer-reviewed international journals. The Harvard memo also said the government was awarding research funding "uncompetitively”, and that there was a vast difference between what graduates had learned and what prospective employers wanted them to know.

These shortcomings can be linked to others in primary and secondary schools. Ms Lien of the Centre for Education and Development says that a basic reform package might begin with the younger age group, by including parents in a decision-making process that has long been dominated by the education ministry. Nearly two years ago, she was among a dozen senior educators who submitted paperwork to the ministry requesting permission to establish a national parent-teacher association. Their group still has not received an official response. Perhaps the ministry is afraid of what Vietnamese parents might say, if they had a platform.

Readers' comments

As a Vietnamese student who has spent the past 11 years of her life in Vietnamese public schools, I agree that the system is IMMENSELY flawed - not only is corruption rampant , but we are so used to it that it is never voiced. There's also major inequalities, as even though there are entrance exams to well-qualified schools, wealthy kids can get in easily with their parent's money. Not only so, the school system forces kids' thinking into a tiny box from the beginning - sure, it makes us disciplined, but because of this, most of us learn without even thinking about it - pure memorization - and therefore fail to be able to use that knowledge to critically think and solve problems. Not to mention moral education - violence is everywhere, even with the enscribed "discipline" from school - kids are free to drink, smoke, carry knives, 7th graders riding motorcycles - that's a normal thing now ! All the system cares about is achievement - and as long as that cover is nice and shiny, it doesn't care if what's underneath collapses - thinking, creativity, morality, all gone.
Also, I've been in the US school system for 2 years, and even though I am in one of the worst rumored school regions in the country, it is a huge improvement from Vietnam.

Vietnamese will invariably criticize their own system because humility is part of the culture. Westerners latch onto and echo that criticism without objectivity because Westerners are looking for any reason to badmouth non-Western educational systems, particularly those that excel, to make excuses for their own failings. It never ceases.

It never ceases to amaze me how Western countries can find it in themselves lecture someone who are doing much better than them
Vietnamese can criticize their own system because they understand nothing's ever perfect and there's always room for improvement
The West might want to learn a thing or 2 from this and understand criticize someone else from a position of failure won't make you successful
And I think this has already been said enough times: PISA was designed specifically to test creativivity, critical thinking and application of knowledge, not rote learning, its precisely these areas high PISA scoring countries are beating the low scoring ones

I don't believe much in the results of the PISA test, as an employer of Vietnamese freshly graduates in finance, I realise that they simply lack a lot of basic skills and knowledge I expected from graduates from this field.
Corruption is rampant in Vietnam, as an example: Academic books are intentionnally flawed so that publishers could sell updates frequently upon request of teachers whom they pay to get recommendation. Public schools are supposed to be free of charge but in fact, pupils' parents have to pay for new and costly uniforms every year, and number of other fees.

You're skeptical? Do you trust yourself? It's about education but you only make comparison and talk about poor poor poor poor poor, and no more. What's the hell.

Do you believe that we've got Field Medal (Nobel prize in math) and South Korea got nil? Even China got nil. Do you believe that each year, our pupils bring home a lot of gold medals from International Competitions in math, physics, chemistry etc?

Our system is corrupt and too bad. Plus, we got serious problems with application.

I've taught at two Canadian British Columbia offshore schools in China. These schools teach a Canadian curriculum, and the students write the provincial exit exams. When students' term marks were below a certain threshold, they were prevented by the administration from writing the provincial exam. The effect was to inflate the schools' exam averages and make them look better than they were. I wonder if this goes on in the international marks competitions?

(There was actually a good reason for the offshore schools to do this: students had only two chances to write the exam, and the schools did not want them to squander the opportunities.)

These deficiencies could be interfaced to others in essential and auxiliary schools. https://www.essaythinker.com/blog/good-research-topics About two years prior, she was around twelve senior instructors who submitted paperwork to the service asking for consent to secure a national guardian educator companionship. Maybe the service is anxious about what Vietnamese folks may say, when they had a stage.

I am Vietnamese,and I know our system is not good, but for high education only, for 15-16 year old, the main things they need are books, and Vietnamese students are hard-working (If you check the number of Vietnamese student in America, S.Korea, JaPan, Australia, ... you will find that we are ranked after some countries only, the reason is just because VN student works hard), so no doubt they can get high math score. Any how, but the PISA result has come out, if you say so, we should campaign to stop them to do useless survey, or at least change the test so the rank would be America, Japan,...if so, the test would not be necessary, because the ranks are based on the country's economy which are always known ?

Not perfect but the best available indicator of raw disciplined talents. Global economy as it races along not defined by developed and developing nations. Developed nations have no capital to harness these raw talents and some have been burdened by sub standard talents that they continue to accept. Nations with capital (eg China) are not able to harness these talents as the capital are tied up with an elite group. The global economy is divided by the haves (20% of people who have capital..not nations) and the rest (have-nots). Among the "haves", more than 50% are beguiled by the snake-oils and fads peddled by slick money managers/promoters and shall have their capital diminished with each market cycle. So we are left with at best 10% who shall harness these talents across borders not out of love but smart management to take the cream from the next growth phase. These talents like the river shall not go away and meander like the river across borders and end up in the non-physical harbors of the top 5% for win-win benefits.

This is simply a replica of Chinese education, focusing on test scores while ignoring the students' ability and quality. The Ministry of Education should reform education system, in order to avoid poison more students.