Vietnam’s national preschool programme is the curriculum framework issued by the Ministry of Education and Training for all children from three months to six years. It covers two stages, nursery and kindergarten, sets goals and expected outcomes across areas of development (five areas in kindergarten: physical, cognitive, language, emotional and social skills, and aesthetic), describes care and education content together, and asks schools to teach through play and integrated themes while evaluating each child’s development without grades.
The programme was first issued in 2009 and has been amended since, most recently in 2020, with a consolidated text published in 2021. It is the document inspectors, principals and Vietnamese colleagues will refer to when they talk about what a class should be doing, so anyone planning a bilingual or international curriculum in Vietnam needs to know it well. This article explains how it is structured, what it actually asks of teachers, where it leaves room for schools, and how a framework such as Global Nexus is mapped onto it.
Where the programme comes from
The current national preschool programme was issued by Circular 17/2009/TT-BGDĐT of the Ministry of Education and Training in July 2009. It replaced a range of older guidance and, for the first time, set out one integrated programme for the whole span from nursery to the end of kindergarten. Two later circulars amended it: Circular 28/2016 and Circular 51/2020. The Ministry then issued a consolidated version in 2021 that brings the original text and the amendments together, and that is the version most schools now work from.
The amendments are worth knowing about because they shifted the tone of the programme in a direction international educators will recognise. The 2016 changes gave schools more flexibility to build their own plans and reduced the prescriptiveness of some content. The 2020 changes continued that trend and adjusted how children’s development is evaluated. The general direction across both was away from a uniform, teacher-led script and towards a framework that schools interpret according to their children and their conditions.
The programme is written in Vietnamese, and there is no official English translation that all schools share. Bilingual schools usually make their own working translation for international staff. If you are given one, treat it as a guide rather than an authority: some key words, such as chủ đề (theme) or đánh giá sự phát triển (evaluation of development), carry meanings in the Vietnamese system that a literal translation can blur.
How the programme is built
Both the nursery programme and the kindergarten programme follow the same pattern. Knowing the parts makes it much easier to find what you need when a colleague refers to "the programme".
- Goals for the stage as a whole, framed in terms of the child’s development rather than subjects.
- A plan for time: the number of weeks in the school year, a suggested daily routine for each age group, and the balance between activities.
- Care content: nutrition, sleep, hygiene, health monitoring and safety, written as part of the curriculum rather than as a separate policy.
- Education content, organised by area of development and by age group, describing what children explore and practise.
- Expected outcomes at milestones: for nursery at 12, 18, 24 and 36 months; for kindergarten at the end of each year from three to six.
- Guidance on implementation: how to organise the environment, which kinds of activity to use, and how to work with families.
- Evaluation of children’s development: daily observation and evaluation at the end of a theme or stage, used to adjust plans, never to grade children.
The care content is the part newcomers most often skip and most need to read. It explains why schools are strict about meal times, why the midday sleep is long and protected, and why teachers keep records of children’s growth. In the logic of the programme, a child who is tired, hungry or unwell cannot learn, so care is the foundation of education rather than a separate service.
The areas of development
Content and expected outcomes are organised by area of development. The nursery stage uses four areas, combining social, emotional and aesthetic growth into one; the kindergarten stage separates them into five.
| Area | Nursery (3–36 months) | Kindergarten (3–6 years) |
|---|---|---|
| Physical development | Movement, coordination, hand skills, nutrition and healthy habits | Gross and fine motor skills, health, hygiene and safety habits |
| Cognitive development | Exploring objects with the senses, noticing colour, shape and size | Exploring nature and society, early maths, scientific curiosity |
| Language development | Listening, responding, first words and simple sentences, rhymes | Listening, speaking, early interest in reading and writing, stories and poems |
| Emotional and social skills | Combined with aesthetics as one area: attachment, self-awareness, simple social behaviour, enjoyment of music and colour | Self-awareness, relationships, emotions, behaviour and social rules |
| Aesthetic development | (see above) | Appreciating and creating through music, art, movement and play |
Note what is not there: there is no separate subject for reading, writing or arithmetic. Early literacy sits inside language development, early number inside cognitive development, and both are expected to be met through play, stories and real experiences. This is why Vietnamese education authorities repeatedly remind preschools not to teach grade-one content early. The programme itself is clear that the kindergarten years are for building foundations, not for running ahead of the primary curriculum.
The principles behind the programme
Learning through play. The Vietnamese phrase học bằng chơi, chơi mà học, learning through play and playing to learn, is used across the system. Play is described as the main activity of the kindergarten child, not a reward after work.
The child at the centre. Official guidance speaks of education that takes the child as its centre, with teachers organising experiences so that children are active, explore and express themselves. In practice, how far a school lives up to this varies, but the principle is in the programme.
Integration through themes. Content from different areas is woven together around a theme, such as family, the school, plants, animals or traffic, over a period of weeks. A single activity is expected to serve several areas at once.
Fit to the child and the setting. Teachers are asked to adjust content to children’s abilities, local culture and the school’s conditions. This flexibility is what allows schools to add supplementary programmes and to choose their own themes.
Partnership with families and the community. The programme treats families as partners in caring for and educating children, and asks schools to keep them informed and involved.
How schools turn the programme into daily plans
Because the programme describes outcomes and principles, each school builds a year plan for each age group, usually led by the school’s professional team (tổ chuyên môn) and approved by the principal. The year plan sets themes and their length, chooses which expected outcomes to focus on in each period, and leaves space for school events and festivals. Teachers then write theme plans, weekly plans and daily plans, which are checked by the leadership team and kept for inspection.
The weekly plan is the document a new teacher will meet first. A typical one lays out the daily routine and fills in, for each day, the planned learning activity (hoạt động học), the focus of outdoor play, what is set out in each play corner, the afternoon activity and any notes on care. Corners are usually named by type: role play, building, books, art, nature and science, music. The learning activity is a short, guided session, often with the whole class or a large group, built around the theme.
Evaluation follows the same rhythm. Teachers note daily what individual children did, how they responded and what concerns arose, and at the end of a theme or a term they review children against the expected outcomes for their age. The result is used to adjust the next plan. There are no grades, no class rankings and no pass or fail, and schools are not supposed to use the outcomes as a test. Good schools turn this into genuine observation; weaker ones reduce it to ticking boxes, which is a problem of practice rather than of the programme.
Common misreadings by teachers trained abroad
Teachers who arrive from systems with a strong play-based tradition sometimes assume the Vietnamese programme is a list of academic targets, because the weekly plans they see are full of short, whole-class learning activities. In fact the programme describes those activities as one part of a day that is mostly play, outdoor time and care routines. The style of the learning activity reflects school habits and class sizes more than the programme text, and many Vietnamese schools are moving towards smaller groups and more open-ended tasks.
The opposite misreading also happens. Teachers used to detailed early learning goals, such as those in England, may conclude that the Vietnamese expected outcomes are too general to plan from. They are general on purpose: the programme leaves schools to choose the activities and the sequence. A second, practical misreading concerns themes. A theme in a Vietnamese preschool is often decided at the start of the year and runs for a set number of weeks, which can look rigid to a teacher who expects topics to emerge from children’s interests. The programme allows for both, and a good team can plan a theme loosely enough that children’s questions shape what happens inside it.
Mapping a supplementary framework onto the programme
Schools that use an international or named curriculum have to show how it serves the national programme. The cleanest way is to start from the national expected outcomes and ask what the supplementary framework adds: a different emphasis, a richer method, a second language, more detailed observation. Global Nexus does this by planning around six dimensions of development, language, emotion, life skills, independence, creativity and thinking, each of which corresponds to one or more of the national areas. Emotion and independence get their own names so that they are planned deliberately, and physical development stays planned through the national programme.
Method is where most of the added value lies. The national programme already asks for play, themes and observation; a framework that borrows from Reggio Emilia, Montessori, project-based learning and STEAM can deepen those methods, for example by turning a theme into a genuine project driven by children’s questions, or by keeping portfolios of children’s work alongside the required records. Bilingual practice is another layer: the national outcomes for language development are met in Vietnamese, while English is added through daily routines, stories, songs and projects.
A short checklist helps curriculum leads keep the two in line. Every theme plan should show the national areas it serves. Every assessment practice should feed the required evaluation rather than replace it. Vietnamese language development should be protected, not reduced, by the second language. And the daily routine should keep the care elements, meals, rest, hygiene and outdoor time, that the programme treats as non-negotiable. A school that can show this mapping clearly will find inspections straightforward and Vietnamese colleagues far more willing to try new methods.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
When was Vietnam’s national preschool programme issued?
It was issued by Circular 17/2009/TT-BGDĐT of the Ministry of Education and Training in 2009, amended by Circular 28/2016 and Circular 51/2020, and published as a consolidated text in 2021. Schools work from the consolidated version.
What are the five areas of development in Vietnamese kindergarten?
Physical development, cognitive development, language development, development of emotions and social skills, and aesthetic development. The nursery stage uses four areas instead, combining emotional, social and aesthetic development into a single area for children under three.
Does the national preschool programme include reading and writing lessons?
No. Early literacy belongs to language development and early number to cognitive development, and both are approached through play, stories and experiences. Education authorities regularly remind preschools not to teach grade-one content in advance.
Are children graded in Vietnamese preschools?
No. The programme asks teachers to evaluate each child’s development through daily observation and periodic review against expected outcomes for their age, in order to adjust teaching. There are no grades, rankings or pass and fail decisions.
Can a school use an international curriculum instead of the national programme?
Vietnamese schools are expected to implement the national programme and can add supplementary programmes on top. An international framework works best when it is mapped onto the national areas and expected outcomes rather than run in parallel.
Is there an official English translation of the programme?
There is no single English translation that all schools share. Bilingual schools usually prepare their own working translations for international staff, which should be read alongside the Vietnamese original, especially for key terms such as theme and evaluation of development.