'Major surgery' from kindergarten to university

TP - This is considered a special time in the history of education because there will be a "major surgery" from kindergarten to university so that Vietnam can have a strong education system.

From kindergarten

The Ministry of Education and Training has just sent a draft guide to arrange and organize kindergartens and general schools in accordance with the two-level government. The Ministry proposes to basically keep the existing high schools, middle schools, primary schools, inter-level schools, and public kindergartens intact, and proposes to arrange and adjust if necessary to conveniently serve the needs of the people and students.

The draft states the principle that when reviewing and merging educational institutions, it must ensure that there is no reduction in access to education; safety and convenience in the process of going to school for learners; and that mergers are not carried out if the geographical distance between the residence and the school is too far or the traffic conditions are not suitable. There must be a clear roadmap, specific plan, and consultation with the community and relevant parties to minimize disruption and impact on the management team, teachers, staff, and learners.

Only merge schools and school sites within a commune; prioritize retaining schools with favorable conditions (facilities, traffic, concentrated population); dissolve separate schools that do not meet standards and operate ineffectively.

Ensure that each commune has at least one kindergarten, one primary school and one secondary school. In special cases, a combined primary and secondary school may be established, but separate areas must be arranged for each level to ensure teaching and learning conditions.

The Ministry of Education and Training requires localities not to merge kindergartens with general schools; not to merge continuing education facilities with general schools...

The country has more than 23 million preschool and primary school students with more than 12,100 primary schools, 10,700 secondary schools, and 2,455 high schools. According to current regulations, the standard for a preschool is to have at least 9 groups and classes (each group has 20-35 students); the maximum is 30 groups. At the primary level, the minimum number of classes is 10 (each class has 35 students), the maximum is 30 classes; in disadvantaged areas, it is 5 classes.

The Hanoi People's Committee has just issued Official Dispatch No. 5200 on the arrangement of public service units, state-owned enterprises, and organizations within the state administrative system. The People's Committee requests the Hanoi Department of Education and Training to be responsible for, based on the direction of the Steering Committee on summarizing the implementation of Resolution No. 18, proposing plans to arrange and adjust the organizational model of high schools (if necessary) in a convenient way to serve the needs of people and students. The city assigns the People's Committees of communes and wards to propose plans to arrange and adjust the organizational model of existing public secondary schools, primary schools, inter-level schools, and kindergartens.

Kindergarten students in Hanoi during a primary school exploration session. Photo: HOA BAN

Hanoi is one of the localities with the largest educational scale in the country. According to statistics from the Hanoi Department of Education and Training, in the 2025-2026 school year, Hanoi will have a total of 2,954 kindergartens and general schools at all levels with a total of about 70,500 classes, meeting the needs of more than 2.3 million students (an increase of about 60,000 students compared to the 2024-2025 school year). Of which, the public sector is 2,337 schools, the rest are private. Hanoi also has 29 vocational education - continuing education centers with about 29,000 students studying high school supplementary courses and 28,000 students studying continuing education linkage programs.

Each province/city has no more than 3 vocational schools.

According to the Government's Plan 130/KH-BCĐTKNQ18 (on the arrangement of public service units, state-owned enterprises, and organizations within the state administrative system), provinces and cities must rearrange the focal points of public service units in the field of education and training in the coming October. The Government requires localities to arrange educational and training facilities so that each province or city has no more than 3 vocational schools, but the schools are self-sufficient in regular expenses (public autonomy), and are not subject to rearrangement. Each province or city has a maximum of no more than 3 vocational schools, not including autonomous schools.

For units under ministries and branches, the arrangement is implemented in the direction of building a number of schools and training centers specializing in artificial intelligence. The merger of vocational schools according to the Government's Plan 130 is a difficult problem for localities after the administrative boundary merger.

According to Prof. Dr. Chu Duc Trinh, Principal of the University of Technology (VNU Hanoi), the arrangement and merger of universities is a historical mission that must be done for the quality of Vietnam's future human resources.

For example, before the merger, the vocational schools in the vocational education system in Ho Chi Minh City had 301 private vocational education institutions, including 32 colleges, 40 secondary schools, 49 vocational education centers and 180 vocational training facilities. After the merger with Binh Duong and Ba Ria - Vung Tau provinces, Ho Chi Minh City has about 400 vocational education institutions, including 74 colleges, 71 secondary schools and the rest are vocational education and continuing education centers. Among these, there are many public vocational schools that are not autonomous. With a large number of schools, implementing the requirement of having only 3 schools is a difficult problem for management levels.

By 2025, the country will have 1,800 vocational training institutions, including 400 colleges, 400 secondary schools, and 1,000 vocational training centers. Thus, the number of vocational schools in the country is currently 800 (including secondary schools, colleges, both private and public).

140 public universities need to be reorganized and merged

Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Kim Son said that the education sector is preparing for a major restructuring of educational institutions (currently the Ministry of Education and Training manages the vertical sector from the general education system (preschool to high school), the vocational education system (continuing education centers to colleges), and the university education system).

Regarding how to arrange to reduce the number of schools, the Minister said that schools that are close to each other in terms of fields will merge to overcome the situation of fragmentation and lack of development.

In the Government’s Plan 130, for the education sector, the Steering Committee requires the rearrangement of the education, health, and state-owned enterprise systems; including merging or dissolving unqualified universities. Thus, the first criterion for merging or dissolving unqualified universities is that they do not meet standards.

In 2024, the Ministry of Education and Training issued a set of standards to ensure the quality and operation of a university, including 6 standards: Organization and administration, lecturers, teaching and learning conditions, finance, enrollment and training, research and innovation.

Students of Hanoi Medical University at the 2025 graduation ceremony. Photo: NGHIEM HUE

The Ministry of Education and Training has not yet announced the list of schools that will be merged or dissolved, but the Ministry's leaders said that there will be many implementation options: central schools transferred to local management, local schools merged into central schools, cross-level mergers between small schools, and the dissolution of facilities that do not meet minimum standards.

It can be seen that the training majors in universities are quite overlapping. For example, in Hanoi, school clusters with similar groups of majors or those that can complement each other are the Economics - Law block in public schools: National Economics University, Academy of Finance, University of Commerce, Foreign Trade University, Hanoi Law University; the infrastructure and architecture block has: Hanoi University of Construction, Hanoi University of Architecture, University of Water Resources, University of Transport, University of Transport Technology; the medical and pharmaceutical block has: Hanoi Medical University, University of Public Health, Hanoi University of Pharmacy, Academy of Traditional Medicine...

Source: https://tienphong.vn/dai-phau-tu-mam-non-den-dai-hoc-post1781273.tpo