Global Nexus does not replace Vietnam's national preschool programme; it is built on top of it. The national programme, issued by the Ministry of Education and Training, sets the goals, content areas and care standards that every licensed preschool must meet, organised into five developmental domains for children aged three to six and four for the nursery years. Global Nexus maps its six dimensions onto those domains and changes the route children take to reach them: two languages instead of one, longer projects, more open-ended materials and observation in place of tests. The goals stay; the methods are where the curriculum makes its own choices.
Teachers arriving from abroad are often surprised by this arrangement, and Vietnamese teachers moving from conventional kindergartens sometimes worry that a bilingual framework will pull them away from what inspectors expect. Both concerns come from seeing the two as competitors. This article sets out what the national programme actually requires, how the Global Nexus dimensions line up with it, and where the boundary sits between what a school may adapt and what it must keep.
What the national programme is
Vietnam's Law on Education of 2019 defines preschool education as the care, nurturing and education of children from three months to six years of age, divided into the nursery stage, for children up to three, and the kindergarten stage, for children from three to six. Within that legal frame, the Ministry of Education and Training issues a single national preschool education programme. It was first issued in 2009 and has since been amended several times, with schools working from the consolidated version currently in force.
The programme is broader than its name suggests. Alongside educational content it covers nurturing and care: nutrition, sleep, hygiene, health monitoring and safety. Its educational part sets goals for each age group and organises content into developmental domains. For kindergarten-age children there are five: physical development, cognitive development, language development, emotional and social skills development, and aesthetic development. For the nursery years the last three are grouped differently, giving four domains, with emotion, social skills and aesthetics treated together.
Two features of the programme deserve emphasis because they are often overlooked. First, it names play as the leading activity of kindergarten children and activity with objects as the leading activity of the nursery years, a framing that comes from developmental psychology and sits comfortably beside international play-based approaches. Second, it describes child assessment through observation, conversation and the products of children's activity, not through tests. Many of the things Global Nexus emphasises are therefore already present in the national text; the difference lies in how fully they are carried out.
How the six dimensions line up with the national domains
The mapping below shows where each Global Nexus dimension finds its home in the national framework. It is not a one-to-one match, and the overlaps are deliberate: a child's growth does not divide neatly into either set of categories.
| Global Nexus dimension | Main national domain | Also draws on |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Language development | Cognitive development, through vocabulary for concepts; aesthetic development, through songs, rhymes and stories |
| Emotion | Emotional and social skills development | Physical development, through calm routines, rest and secure care |
| Life skills | Physical development, including self-care and hygiene habits | Emotional and social skills, through helping, sharing and taking part in group routines |
| Independence | Emotional and social skills development | Physical development, through dressing, eating and moving with confidence |
| Creativity | Aesthetic development | Language and cognition, through storytelling, building and pretend play |
| Thinking | Cognitive development | Language, through explaining and questioning; physical development, through hands-on investigation |
Read in the other direction, the table also works as a coverage check. If a team finds that a national domain has no corresponding activity in a month's plan, the six dimensions have been interpreted too narrowly. Physical development is the domain most often squeezed in bilingual programmes, because large-motor play and outdoor time are easily traded away for indoor language activities. Global Nexus treats daily movement outdoors as part of the curriculum, not a break from it.
Where the two frameworks already agree
Outside observers sometimes describe the Vietnamese preschool system as formal and teacher-led, and in some classrooms that is accurate. The text of the national programme, however, points in another direction. It calls for education organised around themes that integrate the developmental domains, for learning through play and experience, for a child-centred approach, and for attention to individual differences. It asks teachers to arrange learning corners and to use materials from the local environment.
These commitments line up closely with the three Global Nexus principles. Integration around themes is the backbone of the Global Nexus month. Learning through play and experience is the second principle. Attention to individual differences is the second half of the whole-child principle. Assessment through observation matches the curriculum's refusal of scores and rankings.
This agreement has a practical value for school leaders. When a Global Nexus classroom is inspected, the teacher does not need to defend a foreign philosophy against the national programme. She can show how her theme plan meets the age-group goals, where play and experience appear, and how her observation notes record children's progress across the domains. The language of the two frameworks is different, but much of the substance is shared, and teams are most effective when they can speak both languages fluently.
What Global Nexus adds on top
A second language used across the day. The national programme is delivered in Vietnamese, with foreign-language exposure treated as an addition. Global Nexus makes English a working language of the classroom alongside Vietnamese, used in care routines, play, investigation and stories, while keeping Vietnamese as the anchor for most children.
Longer threads of inquiry. Themes in many Vietnamese kindergartens change on a fixed schedule with activities planned in advance for each day. Global Nexus keeps the theme structure but allows project threads to run across a week or more, following children's questions where they lead.
Systematic documentation. Observation is required by the national programme, but in practice it is often reduced to a periodic checklist. Global Nexus expects regular written notes, photographs and work samples organised into a development record by dimension, which also serves as the evidence for national goals.
Materials borrowed from international approaches. Practical-life materials associated with Montessori, open-ended loose parts and documentation panels associated with Reggio Emilia, and simple investigations in the spirit of STEAM all appear in Global Nexus rooms. They serve the national goals rather than replace them.
Mixed teaching teams. Classes are taught by Vietnamese teachers working alongside English-speaking colleagues. The national programme does not prescribe this, but it allows it, and the teamwork shapes how every part of the day is planned.
What the curriculum must not change
Some parts of the national framework are not open to adaptation, and a responsible bilingual programme says so plainly. The age-group goals set the floor: a Global Nexus class of five-year-olds still has to work towards the expectations the programme sets for that age, even if the route is different. The nurturing and care requirements, covering meals, sleep, hygiene, health checks and safety, apply in full. So do the rules on organising groups and classes by age, on the qualifications of teaching staff, and on the documentation a school keeps for its local education authority.
Vietnamese language development is also protected. For a Vietnamese child, the national programme's language goals are goals in Vietnamese, and a bilingual curriculum that let them slip would be failing both the regulations and the child. Global Nexus treats strong Vietnamese as the base on which English grows, a view consistent with research on bilingual development that finds skills built in one language support the other.
Finally, the national calendar shapes the year. Schools mark Vietnamese holidays and festivals, observe the official school year, and take part in the activities local authorities organise for preschools. A bilingual framework that ignored these would cut children off from the culture around them, which is the opposite of what Global Nexus means by stepping out into the world.
Checking a monthly plan for alignment
Global Nexus teams use a short routine to check that a theme plan meets both frameworks at once. The steps below describe that routine in its simplest form.
- List the national age-group goals the theme is expected to address, domain by domain, using the programme's own wording.
- For each goal, name at least one activity in the plan where children will work towards it, and note which Global Nexus dimension that activity serves.
- Check the reverse direction: any activity that serves no national goal and no dimension is a candidate for removal.
- Mark which language leads each activity, and confirm that rich Vietnamese talk appears in every week of the theme.
- Confirm that care routines, outdoor movement and rest are planned, not left as gaps between activities.
- Name the observations that will show progress towards the goals, and who will record them.
The routine takes less time than it sounds once a team is used to it, and it produces exactly the evidence an inspector or curriculum lead will ask for. It also makes visible the moments when a team has drifted towards one framework at the expense of the other, which happens in both directions: some teams become so focused on projects that national goals go unchecked, while others fall back on a checklist of goals and lose the projects altogether.
The check also works at the end of a theme, looking backwards. Observation notes gathered during the month can be sorted against the same list of goals, which shows quickly where the evidence is thick and where it is thin. A goal with no observations attached is not necessarily unmet, but it is a prompt for the team to look more closely at the children concerned before the theme closes.
Four misreadings international teachers often bring
"The national programme is the Vietnamese teachers' job." Splitting the day so that Vietnamese colleagues deliver the national goals while international teachers deliver the bilingual curriculum produces two half-programmes. In Global Nexus every adult in the room shares responsibility for both, even if the Vietnamese teacher is the one who knows the national text best and leads the paperwork.
"National means rote." Some teachers assume the national framework requires whole-class drilling and copying. The programme text does not, and treating it as a rote curriculum leads teams to reject parts of it that are perfectly compatible with play-based practice, such as theme integration and learning corners.
"If it is not in the bilingual plan, it is not curriculum." Care routines, meals, rest and hygiene are part of the national programme and carry real learning in life skills, independence and language. Teachers who treat them as interruptions to the curriculum miss some of the richest moments of the day for two-language talk.
"Alignment is a paperwork exercise." Mapping activities to goals can feel bureaucratic, yet it is often the only point at which a team notices that a whole domain, usually physical development or aesthetics, has quietly dropped out of a month. Done well, the check improves the curriculum rather than just documenting it.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
Do Global Nexus classrooms have to follow the Vietnamese national preschool programme?
Yes. Every licensed preschool in Vietnam must deliver the national programme issued by the Ministry of Education and Training. Global Nexus is built on top of it, mapping its six dimensions onto the national domains and choosing its own methods for reaching the national goals.
How many developmental domains does the national programme use?
For children aged three to six there are five: physical, cognitive, language, emotional and social skills, and aesthetic development. For the nursery years the programme groups emotion, social skills and aesthetics together, so there are four domains for the youngest children.
Is the national preschool programme formal or play-based?
The text names play as the leading activity of the kindergarten years and calls for theme-based, child-centred education with assessment by observation. Classroom practice varies between schools, and some are more formal than the programme itself suggests.
Does teaching in English conflict with the national programme?
The national programme is designed for delivery in Vietnamese, but it does not prevent additional languages. Global Nexus uses English alongside Vietnamese while protecting Vietnamese language goals, so the bilingual element adds to the national framework rather than displacing it.
What should an international teacher read first to understand the national framework?
An English summary prepared by the school is usually the practical starting point, paired with a Vietnamese colleague who can explain the age-group goals for the class. The full programme is published in Vietnamese by the Ministry, and teams often work from it together.
Is the national preschool programme likely to change?
The Ministry has amended the programme several times since it was first issued and has been working on renewed preschool education. Schools should always work from the version currently in force and follow guidance from their local education authority as it is issued.