Overview about international school in Vietnam

Trends 

The trend of international schools has been increasing. The foremost reason is there are big differences between the curriculum of state owned schools and international schools. The learning style of state owned schools is too heavy for children compare to international disciplines. Most of children who study at stated owned school have to take extra classes after hours at their school. Thus they are too busy with the schedule and do not have time to play or relax.

This leads to the development of a child become disharmony and unbalanced. Parents who have reasonable and high living cost think it would be better to let their child study at international schools. The reason is international schools would educate their child attain a good English skills – which really helps them much later in life. Also the environment at international schools would assist the children grow their creative abilities, as well as develop a lifelong learning skills – which does not accentuate much in state owned school.

Tuition fees

Even though the international environments would create a better style of learning for children, tuition fees are still big problems to some of parents. The fact that they can afford the high tuition fees which rising regularly year after year. According to Baomoi’s website the fees for next grade usually increase 20-40 percent. Especially at the secondary level, they have to pay 10 million dong per month. Hence there some situations where the kids have to move from international schools back to stated owned schools.

Overall about the quality of international school 

The quality of international schools is varied. There some schools call themselves as “international schools” however they still follow the curriculum constructed by the Ministry of Education and Training. The only difference is they include intensive English lessons in the schedule. These type of schools have been growing in big cities where the distinguish feature is the classrooms are well equipped with air conditioners and less students (20-25 students/class) compare to normal classes. Beside that there are around 34 international schools that have high standard and offer flexible learning environment, such as Asia-Pacific school, International School HCMC, RISS Saigon etc. Students from these schools can have a gateway to top universities around the world as well as achieve IB (International Baccalaureate) or IGCSE (International Certificate of Secondary Education) – which are certified globally.

Issues when let your kids study in “global” environment

A lot of children who study at international schools can speak English really well; however they could not speak their mother tongue language. Also the “children” could become strangers in their own home as they are being “westernize”. Thus parents should consider category of curriculum should be fit with the child’s ability.