Also available in: Tiếng Việt
The results from the Program for international Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 show that Vietnam’s general education system is more successful than systems in many wealthier countries in providing students with strong basic cognitive skills such as reading literacy and numeracy. Participating for the first time in PISA, Vietnam’s 15 year-olds perform on par with their peers in Germany and Austria and better than those in two thirds of participating countries. This stunning performance is consistent with results from a recent survey of adult literacy which found Vietnamese adults to be strong readers. Indeed, widespread literacy among the workforce has been a major driver of Vietnam’s development success over the last two decades by helping Vietnamese workers move from low productivity agriculture into higher productivity non-farm jobs.

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How to explain Vietnam’s PISA success? My observations are:
How do you think the PISA results should be used to improve the education system in your country? Share with us!

Click here to view the full infographic.
How to explain Vietnam’s PISA success? My observations are:
- First, years of focused investment into expanding enrolments at all levels and efforts to define and enforce minimum quality standards (the “fundamental school quality level” in primary education) across the country have paid off.
- Second, a recent report from the Young Lives research project of child poverty in Vietnam, India (Andhra Pradesh), Ethiopia and Peru shows that there is a high degree of professionalism and discipline in classrooms across Vietnam: Teacher absenteeism is virtually unknown and Vietnam’s teachers are capable. Moreover, student attendance is high.
- Third, however, Vietnam still suffers from early school leaving, particularly among the disadvantaged and poorer students who are often ethnic minorities: The net enrolment rate in upper secondary education stands at 60 percent, and only as few as a third of the students from the poorest 20 percent of the population are in upper secondary school. Since PISA assesses competencies of 15 year-olds in school, this suggests that it only captures those Vietnamese students that remain in upper secondary education – typically the better off, and likely better performing, students. Clearly, a major remaining challenge is to reduce early school dropout rates among the disadvantaged.
A New and Exciting Way of Learning in Vietnam
How do you think the PISA results should be used to improve the education system in your country? Share with us!
Comments
I agree these results are
I agree these results are impressive and to be lauded, but should also consider the issues raised by Diane Ravitch in a recent blog post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/03/four-lessons-on-new-pisa-scores-ravitch/
Thanks for sharing, Dan. I
Great observations Christian.
Great observations Christian. However this is still a system that expects envelopes of money to be exchanged between parents and teachers for good grades and to get a child into a new school. Despite the good PISA results, education in its broader sense has a way to go on other metrics in Vietnam
Thanks Craig. I agree that
Very interesting! More
In your blog, you mention the "fundamental school quality levels" and provided a link for the Implementation Completion and Results (ICR) Report for the World Bank project (Primary Education for Disadvantaged Children) which supported the introduction of these "fundamental school quality levels". I just wanted to let others know that the ICR report is well-worth reading. It explains in more details what are these "fundamental school quality levels" and how they work. The ICR report also contains a nice summary of what happened in Vietnam's education sector during the years 2003-2010. By the way, the report argues that the notion of "fundamental school quality levels" was an important "policy instrument" to quantify problems of lagging schools/regions and direct more resources in their direction. I wonder how important this was to Vietnam's recent PISA success? And how many other countries are using similar tools?
Thanks a lot, Lars. I agree
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