Young Lives Policy Brief 4. 2007

Policy Brief 4: Education For All in Vietnam: high enrolment, but problems of quality remain

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INTRODUCTION
Vietnam recognises the need to improve both access to education and quality. It has adopted
the Dakar Education for All (EFA) Framework for Action – an initiative with greater focus on
quality than those set out in the Millennium Development Goals. Vietnam’s National EFA Action
Plan sets out a pathway to advance key components of the education system by 2015: early
childhood care and pre-school, primary, lower-secondary and non-formal education. The Young
Lives project – a long-term study tracking the well-being of 3,000 children in Vietnam and three
other countries, over a period of 15 years – has identified challenges in improving education
quality and ensuring equity. Young Lives highlights the importance of addressing the needs of
children from rural areas, from ethnic minorities, those living with disabilities and those with poor
nutrition. Enrolment is rising faster than quality. Without corrective action, many poor children
are likely to leave primary school with inadequate numeracy or literacy skills.
Vietnam has a strong political commitment to EFA. Quality of education is one of the country’s
key education objectives – alongside universal education up to lower secondary level, access
to life-long learning, community participation and improved resource management. Vietnam
has developed a rigorous programme to support disadvantaged children through, for example,
building new schools, abolishing primary school fees and making textbooks available without
charge for poor children in highland areas. Education expenditure as a share of total government
spending is set to rise from 15 per cent in the late 1990s to 20 per cent by 2015. Public
expenditure reforms hold education officials to account for progress towards achieving minimum
standards of service quality. Decentralisation is in its infancy, but is creating opportunities for
local educational planners to set context-appropriate priorities. Donors support the pro-poor
objectives set out in Vietnam’s 2006-10 Socio-Economic Development Plan and have increased
support from $2.8 billion in 2004 to $4.4bn in 2007. Official figures show that some 90 per cent
of teachers meet national standards.

However, enormous challenges remain. They include:
• low basic skills acquisition
• a narrow focus on scholastic achievement by teachers who have been trained using traditional
teaching methods which fail to encourage interactive learning
• over-reliance on private tuition
• under-investment in education ’software’ – curricula, teacher training, classroom resources and
educational materials
• limited early child development (ECD) coverage
• unequal access to education for poor, disabled and ethnic minority children
• children failing to perform well due to inadequate nutrition.