One of the most important renovation of the education sector is the establishment of private schools in 1980s. Thang Long, the first of its kind, was set up in 1989 and so far 60 private schools have been established, accounting for 25.5 percent of the country’s total schools.
These nonpublic schools provide training to 232,000 students. Moreover,
the scale of them is expanded more.
During the development procedure, some schools whose investors are dedicated to the education career have done well to affirm their brands.
These schools have rent land for long term and tried to attract young and excellent lecturers in and outside the country as well as invested in scientific research. Subsequently they have good teams of lecturers even far exceeding the public schools.
As per the Ministry of Education and Training’s statistics, Nguyen Tat Thanh University is leading with 1,540 lecturers, Technology University in HCMC with 1,311 lecturers; Duy Tan school with 956 lecturers. Importantly, the rate of professors and associate professors accounts for 5 percent compared to 6 percent for the country.
43/59 schools have laboratories and workshops. Every school has spent VND8.6 billion and 6.5 billion for each lab and workshop respectively. FPT University and Nguyen Tat Thanh University are recognized as a 3 star international university by the annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS).
In 2016, private schools contributed VND111 billion to the state budget. So far, they have contributed over VND1 trillion to the state budget. Importantly, more schools invest in scientific researches and their reports have been published in the world’s prestige scientific magazines.
For instance, Duy Tan school has 417 reports in international journals while Nguyen Tat Thanh school has 102 articles on international newspapers. As per a survey, to facilitate nonpublic schools to develop, the Ministry of Education and Training and the Government should adjust policies on taxation. Most of schools have to pay land tax.
The Ministry of Education and Training must re-arrange the sector structure as well as merging and dissolving these schools which have not adhere to their pledge. Moreover, the Ministry should create fairness on access to finance and ODA aids and other different source as well as grant scholarships to good and low-income students.
Education Minister Phung Xuan Nha stressed that private schools have greatly contributed to the education sector, proving the government’s right policies in calling for social contribution to the education sector.
However, the Ministry must be held accountable for remaining in policies which make investors insecure.
Accordingly, the Ministry will submit its proposal of amending the education law to the government.
