In Viet Nam, enrolment in education has expanded rapidly over the last fifteen years but there are still significant challenges in terms of the quality of education. Many families are paying for private tuition but unless concerted action is undertaken, many poor children will leave primary school with inadequate numeracy and literacy skills. Unequal access to good quality education services is a particular concern for rural, ethnic minority and disabled children and those with poor nutrition.

Research from the Young Lives project from Oxford University, in the UK, and Save the Children UK argues that Viet Nam has a strong political commitment to education for all. The project is tracking the wellbeing of 3,000 children in Viet Nam over a period of 15 years. It shows how education quality and equity can be improved. Good quality is one of Viet Nam’s key education objectives – along with universal education up to lower secondary level, access to lifelong learning, community participation and better management of resources. This is reflected in the fact that education expenditure as a share of total government spending is planned to rise from 15 percent in the late 1990s to 20 percent by 2015. Donors have also increased support from US$2.8 billion in 2004 to US$4.4 billion in 2007.

The Vietnamese Government has developed a programme to support disadvantaged children through building new schools, abolishing primary school fees and giving free textbooks to poor children in highland areas. In addition, decentralisation is creating opportunities for local educational planners to develop curricula relevant to the lives of local children. Nevertheless, there are still significant problems with the education system:

• Teachers, who have been trained using traditional teaching methods, only focus on academic achievement.
• Parents rely heavily on expensive private tuition, which in turn undermines teachers’ incentives to provide good quality teaching during regular hours, as many are gaining from supplementary income generated through the private tuition boom.
• The Government has not invested enough in curricula, teacher training, classroom resources and educational materials, and early child development programmes are limited.
• Poor, disabled and ethnic minority children lack adequately tailored education services (such as teaching in their mother tongue) and many children do not do well scholastically because they are undernourished.

In order to promote child-friendly education, Vietnamese policymakers and donors should:

• improve education quality for poor rural and highland communities and build on the strengths of the community-boarding school programme for ethnic minority children
• increase teaching hours and encourage all-day schooling to reduce incentives for private tuition
• provide teachers with incentives to work in highland areas and improve in-service training and supervision
• reform student assessment methods to focus on core competencies (especially literacy and numeracy skills)
• acknowledge the value of family and community participation in school management, curriculum design and budgeting
• promote an environment and curricula that is relevant to children’s lives and encourages creativity, rather than rote learning
• support child-sensitive budget monitoring to assess the extent to which national and local governments are fulfilling their commitments to improved education service delivery.

Source(s):
‘Education for All in Vietnam: High Enrolment, but Problems of Quality Remain’, Young Lives Policy Brief 4, Young Lives: Oxford, by Pham Thi Lan and Nicola Jones, 2007 (PDF) Full document.
‘Situating Children in International Development Policy’, Journal of Evidence and Policy 4(1), pages 53 to 73, by Nicola Jones and Eliana Villar, 2008
‘Gender and Education for All: The Leap to Equality. Summary Report’, UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/4, UNESCO: Paris, 2003 (PDF) Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development (DFID)

id21 Research Highlight: 29 June 2008

Further Information:
Nicola Jones
Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
111 Westminster Bridge Road
London, SE1 7JD
UK

Tel: +44 20 79220381/0386
Fax: +44 20 79220399
Contact the contributor: n.jones@odi.org.uk

Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK

Young Lives
Department of International Development
Queen Elizabeth House
University of Oxford
3 Mansfield Road
Oxford OX1 3TB
UK

Tel: +44 1865 281800
Fax: +44 1865 281801
Contact the contributor: younglives@younglives.org.uk

Young Lives, Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, UK

Other related links:
'Building policy support for early childhood care and education'

'Education for all? The challenges of inclusive education'

'Early childhood development programmes for the developing world'