Data Must Speak: Viet Nam
The role of teachers in closing learning gaps for ethnic minority students
Highlights
Ethnic minority children in Viet Nam are far less likely than Kinh children to reach the top performance level in mathematics and Vietnamese. In 2022/23, 41 per cent of ethnic minority students achieve “good completion” in mathematics, compared with 68 per cent of Kinh students. In Vietnamese, the figures were 39 per cent and 64 per cent. Ethnic minority children often face poverty, remoteness and a home language that differs from the language of instruction. The gap widens in schools where most students are from ethnic minorities, while Kinh students’ results stay steady.
This brief, a part of the Data Must Speak research, looks at one factor that policy can change directly: how teachers are trained and deployed. Using administrative records from more than 6,000 primary schools over three years, it finds that ethnic minority students tend to attend schools with fewer qualified and highly rated teachers. These students also appear to benefit more than Kinh students when their teachers are well qualified and well rated. The findings show associations, not proven causes, and factors such as home language and family circumstances also shape learning.
The brief offers policy recommendations for national education decision-makers to help close these gaps. It calls on policymakers to prioritize better qualifications, professional standards and in-service support for teachers in schools with many ethnic minority students. It also urges stronger deployment and retention policies, including the incentives in the new Law on Teachers, so that qualified, experienced teachers reach ethnic minority and remote schools. Training in language-responsive and inclusive teaching, including mother tongue-based bilingual approaches, should be expanded. Finally, routine monitoring should track teacher quality by student ethnicity.
