The policy that teachers and students have long awaited

Resolution 71-NQ/TW of the Politburo on breakthroughs in education and training development is considered as “Contract 10 in education”, which includes the content of “ensuring the provision of a unified set of textbooks nationwide”. This is what teachers, parents and students have been waiting for and hoping for for a long time; they agree and support it because of its practicality, humanity, contribution to reducing the burden of costs and ensuring fairness in education.

Dr. Phung Kim Phu, Principal of Hoang Dieu High School (Phu Loi Ward, Can Tho City) commented that having many sets of books creates diversity, helping students and teachers have more choices suitable to regional characteristics, student capacity, and at the same time moving towards personalization in education . This is also the approach of many advanced education systems. On the other hand, many sets of textbooks have encouraged competition between groups of authors and publishers, thereby contributing to improving the quality of books.

Dr. Phung Kim Phu, Principal of Hoang Dieu High School (Phu Loi Ward, Can Tho City).

However, in the process of practical implementation, many difficulties and confusions have arisen, and there is no effective solution to overcome them. Firstly, in reality, it is impossible to give students the right to choose books directly as the original goal, because if in the same class there are many different sets of books for the same subject, teachers cannot organize teaching. Therefore, the right to choose is given to teachers and schools to ensure consistency.

Second, in the work of teaching management, testing and evaluation, having many sets of books creates additional workload, overloading teachers and schools; at the same time, it is difficult to ensure consistency, objectivity and fairness in student evaluation.

Third, parents have difficulty finding books for their children if they use many different sets of books at the same time.

Fourth, we currently do not have a mechanism to collect and reuse textbooks for future generations of students, leading to waste.

Students of Hoang Dieu High School on the opening day of the 2025-2026 school year.

“For education management, a unified set of books will help organize teaching and assessment more conveniently, reducing pressure on teachers and schools,” said Dr. Phung Kim Phu.

According to Dr. Phung Kim Phu, Resolution 71 affirmed that teachers are the driving force and decide the quality of education. In reality, the current teaching mindset that is closely tied to plans and textbooks is still very popular, to the point that without textbooks, it is very difficult for teachers to teach. In the context of innovation, teachers need to change their mindset: teaching according to program objectives, proactively searching for data, building lessons suitable to students' abilities, natural conditions, socio-economic conditions and regional culture. At the same time, it is necessary to be flexible and creative in methods, encourage critical thinking, train self-study capacity and effectively exploit digital learning materials and AI tools. When we do so, we will no longer be too dependent on textbooks.

According to many teachers, the policy of one set of books is strongly supported because a unified set of books will reduce costs for parents and students when a student has to study many sets of books. Teachers also avoid the situation of teaching this book this year, and another book next year, wasting time, not being effective, and not being stable.

In particular, in the former Soc Trang province, there was a policy of rotating teachers from one school to another (from 1 to 2 years depending on geographical distance) and each school chose 1 or 2 sets of books, which also made it difficult for teachers. For example, in the old school they were teaching the Canh Dieu book series, but when they went to your school they were studying the Creative Horizon or Knowledge Connection series... So they had to prepare new lesson plans, and 1 or 2 years after the rotation period ended, they had to return to the old school and prepare new ones. Students also faced similar difficulties when they had to change schools or regions...

Source: https://cand.com.vn/giao-duc/chu-truong-ma-giao-vien-hoc-sinh-deu-mong-doi-tu-lau-i785574/