Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese, French and German will be taught at general schools in Hanoi and HCMC before being applied on a large scale throughout the national education system – reports VietNamNet Bridge.

300 primary schools will teach Japanese under the programme of teaching Japanese in the national educational system in the period of 2016-2026.  This will give access to Japanese as a foreign language subject for 10,000 students.

These include the state-owned Nguyen Du, Khuong Thuong, Chu Van An, and the privately-run Gateway International in Hanoi, and the Vietnam-Australia International School in HCMC have begun teaching Japanese to third graders since this September.

Under the national programme on teaching foreign languages by 2020, the Ministry of Education and Training will organise the teaching of Russian, Chinese and Japanese as first foreign languages. The ministry is building up the curricula for teaching Russian and Chinese. It is expected students will learn these languages from the third to 12th grades.

Korean, French and German would be taught on a trial basis as second foreign languages. Korean will be taught to sixth and tenth graders at several schools in Hanoi and HCMC in the 2016-2017 academic year and expanded to other grades at secondary levels in 2017-2025. German started being taught at sixth graders of Le Quy Don Secondary School in the 2015-2016 academic year.

Read the full article.

Commentary by Nga Bui, Education Services Manager

Along with Vietnam’s global integration, there has been a steady increase in FDI into Vietnam.  According to Vietnam’s Foreign Investment Agency, apart from ASEAN countries as a whole, South Korea and Japan took turn to be the leading investor into Vietnam; China is also a big stakeholder.  As a result, there have been more and more businesses and industries from these countries operating in Vietnam, creating the demand for the human resources with the languages as well as qualifications of their respective countries.  This together with enhanced educational cooperation, scholarship offers and remarkably low tuition fees have led to a recent trend of Vietnamese students going to these non-English speaking destinations, and thus the trend of studying their languages.

Japan, Germany, France and Russia have recently established universities in Vietnam funded by their respective governments.  Japan also has a policy to employ Vietnamese scholars to work at Japanese universities and research institutes.

Japan has become the biggest host of Vietnamese students with almost 38,882 students in 2015, by far surpassing the traditional English speaking countries of US (28,883) and Australia (16,586).

Having said this, English remains the highest demand among all levels of education.  The Minister of Education and Training has recently introduced his initiative to teach English as a ‘second language’ rather than a foreign language in universities.

Please email Phuong.Pham@britishcouncil.org.vn if you have any enquiry.

Sources:
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/education/164309/more-foreign-languages-to-be-taught-at-schools.html
http://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/vietnamese-fdi-2016-outlook.html
http://www.thanhniennews.com/education-youth/japan-is-vietnamese-students-new-top-destination-61172.html