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Education

Why Are Vietnam's Schools So Good? 169

Posted by msmash from the best-in-class dept.
Vietnam understands the value of education and manages its teachers well. From a report: Their children go through one of the best schooling systems in the world, a status reflected in outstanding performances in international assessments of reading, maths and science. The latest data from the World Bank show that, on aggregate learning scores, Vietnamese students outperform not only their counterparts in Malaysia and Thailand but also those in Britain and Canada, countries more than six times richer. Even in Vietnam itself, student scores do not exhibit the scale of inequality so common elsewhere between the genders and different regions. A child's propensity to learn is the result of several factors -- many of which begin at home with parents and the environment they grow up in. But that is not enough to explain Vietnam's stellar performance. Its distinctive secret lies in the classroom: its children learn more at school, especially in the early years.

In a study in 2020, Abhijeet Singh of the Stockholm School of Economics gauged the greater productivity of Vietnam's schools by examining data from identical tests taken by students in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. He showed that between the ages of five and eight Vietnamese children race ahead. One more year of education in Vietnam increases the probability that a child can solve a simple multiplication problem by 21 percentage points; in India the uplift is six points. Vietnamese schools, unlike those in other poor countries, have improved over time. A study published in 2022 by researchers at the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank based in Washington, dc, found that in 56 of 87 developing countries the quality of education had deteriorated since the 1960s. Vietnam is one of a small minority of countries where schools have consistently bucked this trend.
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Why Are Vietnam's Schools So Good? More

Why Are Vietnam's Schools So Good?

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  • Why (Score:2, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 )

    >"Why Are Vietnam's Schools So Good?"

    Oh, I don't know, just a guess, but maybe they

    1) Maintain discipline in the classroom/school.
    2) Focus on the important subjects like language, science, and math.
    3) Have support of parents who expect their kids to do well.
    4) Are not lowering the standards so "no one left behind".
    5) Are not wasting time and energy and confusing kids with gender and "identity" nonsense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      Or wanting only one religion in school shoved down every other kids' throat.

      Or banning books in school for everyone because they don't want their kid to read it.

      No homeschooling.

      No private schools for the well off paid for by taxpayers.

      No religious schools paid for with taxpayer money.

      Not to mention the parents want their kids to be educated about everything and want them to succeed.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Raisey-raison ( 850922 )

        No homeschooling.

        How does Homeschooling lower public schooling standards? It should raise them because there are more resources for other kids. Blaming homeschooling is like saying public schools are doing badly because it rained somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

        • Re:Why (Score:5)

          by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @06:21PM (#63675535) Homepage Journal

          The idea is probably that with you have disproportionately smart kids with dedicated parents, who would do excellently in whatever schooling system they go through, going into home schooling, and thus lowering the averages of public schools. Also, once you remove said smart kids from schools, their parents are no longer interested in supporting the public schools, by volunteer work, by votes, by taxes.

          It's kind of like how in the US south the public school system is horrible - when desegregation was pushed through, the response in a lot of areas was for all the white people to send their kids to private schools where they were(at that point) able to still segregate/discriminate against all but the token black kid or three. They also responded by defunding the public school system as much as they could, making the education bad.

        • No homeschooling.

          How does Homeschooling lower public schooling standards? It should raise them because there are more resources for other kids. Blaming homeschooling is like saying public schools are doing badly because it rained somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

          The average test scores for home schooled students vastly surpasses that for public school students because of self-selection. Same thing for charter schools. This is especially true when looking at the bottom quartile. Take the left-behind students in the most poorly performing public schools (i.e., the ones not in charter schools) and put them in home schools or charter schools, and guess what the results would be.

          • It's not necessarily that simple. Sweden made some large educational reforms in the 90's to allow for more charter schools and school choice. Even though the charter schools started pulling some students from the public schools, results for students in those schools went up as well.

            Some US public schools are so bad that the results could scarcely get worse. I'm reminded of a story from a few years ago where (if I recall correctly) a Baltimore high school student who had only passed a few classes in four

          • However it is not clear whether it is pure ability that counts for most, or the freedom and flexibility of home schooling.

            Putting exceptionally intelligent (or otherwise talented) children into standard schools may do as much as anything could to suppress their potential. The teachers aim to get their average pupils through the usual tests, while those of outlier high intelligence (OHI) learn mostly to daydream and see how little work suffices to gain acceptable reports.

            OHI pupils gain from (excellent) home

        • How does Homeschooling lower public schooling standards?

          Homeschooling removes the most involved and caring parents from public schools and leaves behind the apathetic.

          It should raise them because there are more resources for other kids.

          The problems with America's schools have little to do with "resources". We spend more on our schools than any other country in the world but Norway. And educational spending in America it more progressive than many assume [economist.com].

          Vietnam's schools are not successful because they spend more.

          Vietnam spends far less, and a typical class size is 50 students.

          • We spend more on our schools than any other country in the world but Norway.

            Now ask yourself where that money is going, particularly given that the teachers are always crying about low pay coupled with having to buy class supplies out of pocket (or making the parents buy them).

            The cash ain't going where it's supposed to.

            • Everybody complains about low pay.

              That doesn't mean their pay is low.

              If salaries are high enough to attract qualified employees, they aren't too low.

            • The cash ain't going where it's supposed to.

              I bet it is. The system has been suborned to provide income streams for various layers of upper management and political supervision. That's where the money is going.

    • Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by milgner ( 3983081 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @05:11PM (#63675365)
      Nope, that's not it. From https://documents1.worldbank.o... [worldbank.org]

      [...] government’s strong commitment to educational development, supported by high accountability mechanisms; relatively high public spending with a focus on investing in general education, basic inputs, and equity, together with high household investment in education; attracting and supporting qualified teachers; strong investment in preschool education; and strategic use of assessments. The Vietnamese government’s unshakable commitment to improving people’s learning, together with high accountability and autonomy for schools, supported by a strong internal and external monitoring and reporting mechanism, have driven the continuous expansion and improvement of the education system

      • Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)

        by saider ( 177166 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @06:55PM (#63675645)

        Your quote said mostly the same thing. The poster only had a couple items not cited, although 4 could be the same as 1, and 5 the same as 2.

        1) Maintain discipline in the classroom/school = "high accountability mechanisms"
        2) Focus on the important subjects like language, science, and math. = "focus on investing in general education"
        3) Have support of parents who expect their kids to do well. = "high household investment in education"
        4) Are not lowering the standards so "no one left behind".
        5) Are not wasting time and energy and confusing kids with gender and "identity" nonsense.

        • Well it is the same if you ignore what it's saying and replace it with stuff you like, while ignoring the things you don't such as the government actually caring and investing in and especially poorer areas

          Provinces are required to spend 20% of their budgets on education, which has helped regional equity.

          or

          [teachers] receive frequent training and are given the freedom to make classes more engaging. To tackle regional inequality, those posted to remote areas are paid more. Most important, teacher assessment is based on the performance of their students. Those whose pupils do well are rewarded through presitigious âoeteacher excellenceâ titles.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          You missed the most important one: high levels of public spending.

          In some countries being a teacher is a low wage profession that is often derided as being for people who can't do a higher paying job, so take teaching instead.

          In countries with really good educational outcomes for the vast majority of students, teaching is seen as a prestige career, well paid and very important.

          • You missed the most important one: high levels of public spending.

            In some countries being a teacher is a low wage profession that is often derided as being for people who can't do a higher paying job, so take teaching instead.

            In countries with really good educational outcomes for the vast majority of students, teaching is seen as a prestige career, well paid and very important.

            This seems like the most probable explanation to me. No offense to any teachers out there, but in the US teaching is far from a career that attracts the "best and brightest." In Vietnam teaching would be at the top of a hierarchy of employment, where in the US teaching is largely regarded as being at the bottom. And then on top of all that, there's huge entrenchment of the existing employee base in the US via the teacher's union and various teacher advocacy groups, which have often settled for increased

      • Nope, that's not it.

        A fine brief demonstration of why /. threads are so often unproductive. A flat dismissal of someone else's assertion or argument - without even a quotation to show what is being disagreed with - is not likely to lead to fruitful discussion.

    • Re:Why (Score:5, Informative)

      by Can'tNot ( 5553824 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @05:11PM (#63675367)
      Good news! You don't have to guess, there's a whole article on the subject.

      Vietnam’s teachers do their job well because they are well-managed. They receive frequent training and are given the freedom to make classes more engaging. To tackle regional inequality, those posted to remote areas are paid more. Most important, teacher assessment is based on the performance of their students. Those whose pupils do well are rewarded through presitigious “teacher excellence” titles.

      Besides such carrots, a big stick is the threat of running foul of the ruling Communist Party. The party apparatus is obsessed with education. This percolates down to school level, where many head teachers are party members.

      The obsession has other useful effects. Provinces are required to spend 20% of their budgets on education, which has helped regional equity. That the party pays such close and relentless attention also ensures that policies are adjusted to update curriculums and teaching standards. Society at large shares the fixation. Vietnam’s families are committed to education because of its ingrained Confucianism, suggests Ngo Quang Vinh, a social-sector officer at the Asian Development Bank. He says that even poorer parents fork out for extra private tutoring. In cities, many seek schools where teachers have won “excellence in teaching” titles.

      • The party apparatus is obsessed with education.

        Which rather clashes with the belief that "authoritarian" governments feel that they stand to gain from keeping their citizens ignorant and uneducated.

        Curiously enough, that description fits Western education much better than Vietnamese, Chinese, or Russian education.

        It's almost as if those horrible repressive governments were deliberately teaching their people to think clearly and critically.

        • It's almost as if those horrible repressive governments were deliberately teaching their people to think clearly and critically.

          Here is the thing, education and critical thinking are, unfortunately, not the same and neither are all kinds of authoritarian governments.
          The typical communist dictatorship considered education very important, but at the same time they have fostered anti-intellectualism and critical thinking was not looked kindly upon.
          Other kinds of authoritarian governments (like Putin's Russia f

    • Re: Why (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      A child's propensity to learn is the result of several factors -- many of which begin at home with parents and the environment they grow up in. But that is not enough to explain Vietnam's stellar performance. Its distinctive secret lies in the classroom: its children learn more at school, especially in the early years.

      So the parents are actively involved in raising their children and the teachers spend more classroom time teaching (not preaching).

      If only there was a way to bring those ideas to America, where we instead fob off our children on the public schools, and the teachers feel a need to preach the latest gospel, be it BLM, Trans rights, etc...

      The differences between successful and unsuccessful public schools are obvious to even an untrained observer, but the only "fix" we are allowed to offer is more money to impr

    • Study involved math.
      But can they write a poem?
      'Nam's schools focus math.

      I kid. No one cares... :)
      But I did post as a haiku just for fun :)

      Obviously my focus was also not the arts :p

    • If you think that schools are spending time "wasting time and energy and confusing kids with gender and "identity" nonsense", then you have been drinking too much fake Russian propaganda on social media. I suggest that you get out of your basement, get some fresh air, even visit a school. You will also see that kids are not using litter boxes. Lol.

      • I have friends with kids in several different school systems. Every one of them confirm this stuff is actually happening. They know, they talk to their kids and the school.

        It might not be happening everywhere (my sample size is still low, and regional), or everywhere to the same extent. But it is absolutely happening. Dismissing it as a conspiracy theory isn't helping the situation.

  • Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @04:52PM (#63675305) Homepage
    Vietnam is a society deeply invested in eliminating class. The opposite is true in the US. The elite are deeply invested in maintaining their position and gate keeping upward mobility.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And keeping the middle class in fear. They may get the idea that things are not well and start to protest otherwise. Keeping them in constant fear of sliding downwards nicely occupies them otherwise. Cannot have the higher-status slaves get ideas, after all.

  • Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jythie ( 914043 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @04:54PM (#63675309)
    It all comes down to purpose. Education does well or poorly depending on what the state/culture view it as 'for'. in countries where education is a way of filtering your culture into winners and losers, well, they all lose. In countries where education is a tool for advancing the country, it tends to do better.

    • Re:Purpose (Score:4, Informative)

      by senileoldfart ( 1146807 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @06:07PM (#63675505)
      While serving in Vietnam during the summer of 1968, I visited a cinder-block, dirt-floored home in a rural village. There was a 4th-grade girl working on her homework. I looked to see what she was studying. It was set theory, the same as my brother, a high school junior was studying back home in the US.

      • Honestly that should come as no surprise. Mathematics in the USA is way behind peers in Canada, UK, Australia, who in turn are way behind their peers in much of Europe. And yes set theory is introduced in many European countries in primary school as well.

        If you're going to compare overall education in the USA with any other country it's more representative to not look at mathematics, since mathematics is abysmal in the states.

        • Honestly that should come as no surprise. Mathematics in the USA is way behind peers in Canada, UK, Australia, who in turn are way behind their peers in much of Europe. And yes set theory is introduced in many European countries in primary school as well.

          Yeah...but, can that those non-US students even come close to telling you how many different genders there are and what pronouns go with which ones...?

          ;)

          • To be fair, the OP was talking about 1968 - we still only had two genders and our country was all caught up in the "space race".

            Oh, and the federal Department of Education hadn't been invented yet, that was a not to come until a certain Navy Veteran/Georgia Peanut Farmer entered the Oval Office...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I had set theory in 4th grade (and thereby also propositional logic). That was in Germany. Has been one of the most useful things I ever learned in math. Of course, they stopped that a few years later to "not put too much stress on the children". Funny, I do not remember anybody back then being stressed out by playing with colored shapes in small and large, thick and thin. My dark suspicion is that it was actually pressure from the parents that did not understand the math their 4th graders were doing anymor

      • I was in Saigon / TP.HCM in 2007. Arrived around midnight and observed welding and heavy construction at that hour. Later learned sleeplessly that demolition and debris haul also happen at night because that's when trucks are allowed to operate in central Saigon. While walking around I was intrigued by one store and went in. The place sold subject review books for somewhere between secondary and undergrad level. These were small pulp paperbacks and were very inexpensive. I bought a physics review as a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Pretty much this. Because the "filtering" does not actually require learning anything useful. Filters are basically all the "Chinese Imperial Examination" in various strength-grades. That examination offered high status and prosperity if passed. It was open to anybody. But to pass it, you had to have so much additional schooling that only the wealthy could afford to get their children through it.

      It was also designed to prioritize rote learning (with a lot of the material only available through the expensive

  • I killed time every morning in the pandemic with a blog (at brander.ca - easily seen on main page) where my theme was the "COVID Cup" to be awarded to the nation with the lowest deaths/million. (After filtering for liars like China and India.)

    Vietnam and Cuba being communist, I didn't know whether to trust, though both nations have been very open and cooperative on UN Health measures. But I grew to trust that they'd simply had really good lockdowns, (the one public service that tyranny can provide...Cuban

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Genuine communism has many virtues in social groups smaller than 50. It doesn't scale well, however. And it needs to be accepted by the group for the virtues to manifest. This is most commonly because of a shared religion, but that's a mechanism, and there are others. You do need a charismatic leader who's accepted as such, however.

      Socialism comes in so many forms that I don't think a global statement about it's virtues is possible. Some of the forms don't have even as many virtues as scaled up communi

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by martinX ( 672498 )

        Have you ever experienced the political and economic ideology of a student share house? Communism doesn't scale down, let alone up.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Did you have a charismatic leader that everyone accepted?
          FWIW, I have lived in a (very small) "commune". I've seen it work, and I've seen it fall apart. One failed example doesn't prove much. Every kind of organization can fail.

          FWIW, The "University Students Cooperative Association" lasted from at least the late 1940 through the 1980's, and I've no reason to believe that it failed then, I just lost touch with it. The current students that were members were the collective owners. It is/was a mix of soci

    • I do not know if the country is really "socialist"; It is a one party state and the government does still control some key areas like banking , utilities however it has been privatizing others and slowly letting market forces in; I think over 50% of the people work in some private business and not in a state owned business .

    • As it was reported at the time, Vietnam had REALLY effective, fast and deep contact tracing.

      Hats off to them from Australia, we had a great head-start but aside from vaccinating kind of didn't follow through. We've _still_ got people claiming that every death must be vaccine-related, which I consider an abject failure of some kind. Erosion of trust, if I had to put it in words.

  • The man in the black pajamas
  • Perhaps school is one thing communism is good at?
    • Also, getting rich enough to buy opposing cities in Civ 2.

    • It's worth noting that the Soviet Union did a fine job of educating the peasants (at least the ones Stalin didn't kill) into industrial workers and scientists. Unfortunately once educated the workers could see they were being screwed and " they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work" came into play. The system didn't last long after that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, STEM schooling in the Soviet Union was mostly excellent. What sucked badly was politics, economics and ethics.

  • Salary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Monday July 10, 2023 @05:33PM (#63675415) Homepage Journal

    At a glance, it looks like they pay teachers more than they pay most people. That's not the case in a lot of places - certainly not the case here in the US.

    • At a glance, it looks like they pay teachers more than they pay most people. That's not the case in a lot of places - certainly not the case here in the US.

      Strange...and yet, the US spends more money on "education" that pretty much any other country on earth, besides Norway.

      Hmm...where's all that money going?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )
        Easy answer: High paid, low output administrators sucking up all the funds. They are just there to wear a suit, come up with stupid reactionary ideas, and get way too much pay.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Given that teachers are huge multipliers, it makes a lot of sense to select the best and brightest and then compensate them really well. Saves a lot of money overall. As soon as teachers are not important to a society, that society declines as there really is nothing else it can do at that point. You can tide things over for a while by importing well-educated people, but that is a limited game.

  • As several longitudinal studies have shown, excellence in elementary school is very poorly correlated with just about any metric for success as an adult. That's not an excuse to avoid investment in elementary schools. Rather, it's a realization that the true goal of success as an adult is much more complex than pushing young kids to do math problems. If the correlation existed, then we could trivially solve the world's educational problems by force feeding multiplication to young kids.

  • I guess I would try harder too if you beat when I didn't.

    https://e.vnexpress.net/news/n... [vnexpress.net]

  • Sure Vietnam teaches students 10X better for 1/10th the money.

    But I bet Vietnam lags in promoting gender affirming care, or promoting racial division.
    And teachers probably have to put with nagging issues like accountability.

    • Slashdotters appear to be way more obsessed with gender than our teachers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 )
      I'm so sick of this gender fad. It just ain't that important and is glomming onto the race equality movement. That's far more important, at least in multiracial countries like the US, but in Vietnam they are basically all the same race so it's not much of a concern there. So not tracking your point other than it's "in fashion" virtue signaling. There's nothing you can do about it, a man in a dress is always going to be made fun of by a significant proportion of the population. Might be unfair and harsh, but

  • and administrators. Good diet, and good medical care, and low crime around schools and in the kids neighborhoods.

    I once read a long time ago that Great Britain under the strict rationing of World War II, and which lasted afterwards, saw that nation produce a noticeably healthier generation of children. Authoritarianism for the win?

    • becuase the average working class poor child got a better diet guaranteed than they did under pre war capitalism.

      • Yeah, that could have been the case. I read what I read decades ago, but IIRC the regulations did seem to reflect what even today could be called enlightened thinking, with fats being deemed important, and the regs making sure kids got their butter and occasional egg. And of course food was generally less processed back then.

    • At the end of the war they had markedly fewer mouths to feed, it's not surprising the island nation was better able to feed its children after the war.

  • not the schools (Score:3)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2023 @11:13AM (#63677265)

    It's not the schools, it's the culture. If parents and students value education, the schools will work. All else flows from that.

  • This all flows from the family. There are SO many single parent families in which the parent doesn't really care about their kids' education. Oh, they may say they want their kids educated, but when it comes to the heavy lifting: being involved in the school, offering opportunity at home, encouraging reading/science/educational activities, they're nowhere to be found or are too busy with their own things. If your parents aren't coordinating and pushing you towards bettering yourself, you're going fail.
  • For 1000 years, Vietnam was where China transferred their retarded and malformed people, just to get them out of site. However, this mixing of "genetic oddities" has now produced the unexpected: Super Humans I hear China is quite embarrassed by this, on one hand they saved face, but on the other hand, they gave away some of their best genetic diversity resulting in China being bested by their own efforts.

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