Vietnam plans to add business to high school curriculum from the next school year, Nguyen Minh Hien, Vice Minister of Education and Training, said at a conference in Hanoi on 8th January 2013.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) piloted teaching Business as an optional subject for 2,164 students at seven upper secondary schools and four vocational education centres from 2006-2007.  A survey conducted with students completing the course showed that 49.3% interest in starting up their own business after the course and 69.8% confident that they had sufficient knowledge in doing so.

Teaching business at schools was seen to be essential at the conference, which could be expanded to secondary schools in the future.  There are currently 30% of students choose to start working after completing lower secondary education without taking upper secondary education; 80% of upper secondary school students choose to start working after graduation rather than taking higher education.  Running a business is an option for many.

MoET aims to teach Business at schools as an optional vocational subject.  The pilot will be implemented in 15 provinces and cities between 2013 and 2015, with ten high schools in each of these provinces, and nationwide after 2015.

The programme used for the pilot is Know about Business (KAB) with 80 to 120 hours length of time, which is managed and implemented in 20 countries by the International Labour Organization (ILO).  The course aims to help students an vocational orientation  to familiarise them with the entrepreneur and enterprise concepts and help them in vocational orientation.