If you ever visit Hanoi (and you should, it is a beautiful city), one of the most ancient buildings you will encounter is the Temple of Literature. It dates back to 1070 and is Vietnam’s first national university, as well as one of Hanoi’s most important cultural landmarks.
If you walk around the lovely walled courtyard, you will see stone steles bearing the names of doctoral graduates dating back centuries. Families regularly bring children before exams to pay respects and it is also a popular spot for graduation photos.
If you want to understand how deeply education is woven into Vietnamese identity, look no further.
Vietnam is a country with a long, deep-rooted appreciation for education. The country is also deeply patriotic, with ambitious goals for economic development, and the accomplishment of this goal is widely understood to be connected to trade and engagement with the world.
It is no surprise then that Vietnam’s bilingual education sector is booming.
Across Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, new schools are emerging with “bilingual international” in their names, competing for emerging middle-class families who have come into money and are prioritising their children’s education as one of the first long-term investments they make with their newly disposable income.
But don’t let the word “international” fool you. These are not international schools in the true sense of the word.
“Vietnamese first, but not Vietnamese alone”
Bilingual schools may have expatriate teachers and even sometimes a foreign head of school, but they are legally Vietnamese schools, licensed under the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), integrating international curriculum with the national curriculum.
While International schools deliver a fully international curriculum (IB, Cambridge, British) taught primarily in English, with limited MOET oversight focused on licensing, bilingual schools often implement a dual-curriculum model and are subject to full Vietnamese regulatory compliance. This incldues curriculum approval, inspections, and ongoing reporting to district education authorities.
This distinction shapes everything. Approaching a bilingual school as if it were an international school creates friction with regulators, with Vietnamese staff, and with many families who chose this model precisely because it has a combination of the appeal of international education coupled with the local practices they are familiar with.
The value proposition
It is important to understand that the growth of bilingual education is not driven by dissatisfaction with the national system. Vietnamese families generally respect Vietnamese teachers and have confidence in the Vietnamese approach to education. The demand reflects a desire to build English skills and gain international exposure without sacrificing Vietnamese credentials and identity. There are prestigious Vietnamese universities and not everyone aspires to send their children overseas.
The demand reflects a desire to build English skills and gain international exposure without sacrificing Vietnamese credentials and identity
For families, bilingual schools keep children connected to Vietnamese language, culture, and educational pathways. Students can sit MOET matriculation exams alongside international qualifications and keep their options open: to study in either a university overseas or a reputable Vietnamese university. This matters to parents who want their children globally prepared but grounded in their heritage.
This is not a compromise or a budget alternative. Many families are making a deliberate choice about identity and pathways.
Positioning bilingual schools as “international lite” misses what families are actually buying.
Building a curriculum from scratch
It is important to understand that there is no government-provided template for integrating Vietnamese and international curricula. Each school develops its own approach, and is subject to MOET approval. This is not a one-time exercise – it requires ongoing collaboration between Vietnamese and international educators, continuous adjustment, and years of refinement.
A fundamental design question is which curriculum serves as the backbone. Schools that emphasise the MOET curriculum benefit from qualified, experienced Vietnamese teachers operating within a system they understand deeply. Regulatory compliance is more straightforward.
Schools that emphasise the international curriculum gain from international pedagogical approaches, but compliance work becomes more labour-intensive. International programs are not designed with MOET administrative structures in mind. This burden falls on Vietnamese academic leaders, adding substantial workload. In practice, compliance work sometimes gets deprioritised under operational pressure, only to be rushed when inspections are announced.
The teacher reality
In bilingual schools, the most qualified and experienced teachers are often Vietnamese. They provide stability, deep curriculum knowledge, and long-term commitment. Many expatriate teachers, by contrast, are temporary residents with less formal qualifications.
International schools charge higher fees and can afford salaries that attract experienced expatriate educators. Bilingual schools operate at lower fee levels and cannot match these packages. The result is that bilingual schools often recruit less experienced expatriate teachers, many holding ESL training rather than qualified teacher status.
Most bilingual schools recruit expatriates already in-country – partly to avoid relocation costs, partly because visa processes are easier to navigate from within Vietnam. Schools compete for the same limited pool, and teachers move frequently between competitors. A constrained talent pool means significant turnover is difficult to recover from quickly.
The ideal long-term solution is investing in Vietnamese teachers to deliver the international program
Vietnamese teachers carry institutional knowledge, community relationships, and regulatory expertise that expatriate staff lack. Families develop strong relationships with Vietnamese homeroom teachers – these are often the primary point of contact, not expatriate subject teachers. The assumption that expatriate leadership should drive academic direction does not hold.
The ideal long-term solution is investing in Vietnamese teachers to deliver the international program. This builds on existing strengths and creates a more sustainable model than relying on a rotating pool of expatriates.
Navigating the regulatory environment
Bilingual schools operate within a regulatory environment that requires constant navigation. Vietnamese teachers face significant reporting requirements and mandatory attendance at government training. Sudden directives from district authorities are common, often with unclear expectations and serious implications if interpreted incorrectly.
Vietnamese teachers generally have higher tolerance for this unpredictability – it is normal within the system they trained in. Expatriate teachers expect more predictability and find these disruptions frustrating. Managing this expectation gap is an ongoing leadership challenge.
Cultural realities
Bilingual schools must bridge different approaches to teaching, discipline, and school culture. Vietnamese and international practices differ. Some differences are subtle and some are blaring. And both sides often feel strongly that their way is correct.
Policies in Vietnamese schools may function more as guidelines than strict rules. Decision-making structures may appear collaborative but are often strongly led by the school leader. Parent expectations are shaped by Vietnamese education culture, for example families may expect textbook-driven learning as a marker of quality. Cutting-edge teaching approaches may not be understood or appreciated.
And a persistent challenge school operators will need to recon with is ensuring that expatriate and Vietnamese staff operate as one school rather than two schools under one roof. Joint planning is often aspirational but it is important. Conflicting timetables, heavy administrative loads, and language barriers can get in the way, but bridging the gap is essential for a truly bilingual school to operate.
At the same time, implementing change requires patience and relationship-building. A heavy-handed approach does not generally work, particularly when driven by foreign leadership. School improvement is most effective when framed around accreditation goals rather than as interventions to fix problems. Working toward international accreditation provides a shared external benchmark that does not function as criticism of current practice.
A different mindset
Vietnam’s bilingual sector offers access to a growing market of families who want international quality within a Vietnamese framework. For operators considering this space, the key insight is that bilingual schools are their own model and should be seen as a diluted version of international education.
They are mostly Vietnamese schools with international elements integrated. The operating logic, regulatory environment, and talent model are often built on a Vietnamese foundation. And success requires accepting that you will be working within Vietnamese systems and culture, not around them.
Those who understand this can build something valuable. Those who treat it as simply a cheaper international school will find the reality more complex than expected.
