Well Begun, but Aiming Higher : A Review of Vietnam's Education Trends in the Past 20 Years and Emerging Challenges
Given its modest position as a lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the rest of the world with its remarkable performance on standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed years of schooling. This paper provides an overv...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/105601498481351222/Well-begun-but-aiming-higher-a-review-of-Vietnams-education-trends-in-the-past-20-years-and-emerging-challenges http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27610 |
| Summary: | Given its modest position as a
lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the
rest of the world with its remarkable performance on
standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed
years of schooling. This paper provides an overview of the
factors behind this exemplary performance, from an
institutional viewpoint and by analyzing several data
sources, some of which have rarely been used. The study
finds that Vietnam has significantly increased school
enrollment at all school levels in the past 20 years, and
has achieved virtually universal primary school enrollment.
Girls' net enrollment rates caught up with and then
overtook those of boys at the secondary level in the past
decade. Most of the variation in school enrollment and
completed years of schooling was due to within-commune
individual factors, rather than between-commune or
between-province factors. School-level factors played an
important, but diminishing, role in determining
students' test scores, which was likely caused by a
convergence in school quality in the country. The paper
further discusses a host of challenges for the country—most
of which have received insufficient attention to date—such
as little school choice, a low secondary enrollment rate
(compared with other Programme for International Student
Assessment participants), inadequate training for the labor
market, and the necessity of strategic planning for systemic reforms. |
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