With its young population and a long-standing embrace of education, Vietnam offers great opportunities for investors in the field. Since 1975, education has been at the centre of policy discussions and reforms. Moreover, since 2000 the government has committed 15% – 20% of its public expenditure to education, the highest rate amongst all other ASEAN countries. Throughout the last decade, Vietnam has made considerable headway in primary enrolment rate, literacy rate and PISA ranking, as readers shall find in this report.

First, Vietnamese people prefer the private education sector over the public school system because of its superior teaching method and outcome for students. This preference translates into a strong market for ‘non-public’, ‘supplementary’, and ‘overseas’ services. Second, Vietnamese people increasingly value supplementary attributes, such as language proficiency and soft skills, to enhance their employability. Third, there is a growing demand for world-class education through abroad study.

This report seeks to shed light on the education market in Vietnam. First, it provides an overview of Vietnam’s education landscape by introducing its education system, on-going trends, as well as the underlying drivers, barriers, and opportunities and challenges for foreign investors. This section will provide readers with more details on the public, private, and supplementary sectors, as well as overseas studies of Vietnamese students.

In the second part, the report lays out the competitive landscape for the public, private and supplementary sectors. Three cases studies are provided featuring Vinschool, a local private institution, the Vietnamese-German University, a foreign-invested institution, and British Council Vietnam, a language-training provider. The case studies are followed by a brief profile of end consumer. Interested investors can find more about related laws and regulations in the final part of this report.