Vietnam successful but when Bangladesh will succeed

Both Bangladesh and Vietnam have many things in common, and it is the same when it comes to education. Without a doubt, Vietnam’s educational system has advanced much in recent years since we did. Starting from an identical condition to ours, this study explores why and how they were able to advance so far.

We became independent in 1971. The two Vietnams were united to form a new Vietnam in 1976 when the socialist-backed North Vietnam overthrew the capitalist-backed South Vietnam. Therefore, Bangladesh has a tiny age advantage. The same is true of their most important leader, Ho Chi Minh, who shares the apparent predilection for education of the father of our nation.

In that both Ho Chi Minh and Bangabandhu strove to set up structures for the state to take full responsibility for education, they were similar to Bangabandhu in their recognition of education as a constitutional right of citizens. Regarding a Chinese proverb about education, he would often say, “If we think of 10 years’ profit, we should plant trees (i.e. plow the land); and if we think of 100 years’ profit, then we have to make creative human labour.” Due to this, per capita income of Vietnamese is lower than that of its neighbours Malaysia and Thailand (3,760 dollars in Vietnam vs. 2,469 dollars in Bangladesh) but they are ahead in education.

There are supposedly prominent schools in Vietnam. They perform significantly better on examinations in reading, math, and science as compared to other countries. According to the most recent World Bank data, Vietnam exceeds Malaysia and Thailand in these categories as well as Canada and Britain, which are six times richer than Vietnam. According to data from the Education Commission led by the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Bangladesh does better than other South Asian countries as well as Malaysia, South Africa, or Brazil in this regard, but it lags far below Vietnam.

If we simply evaluate Vietnam in terms of developing countries, it is doing fairly well. The research institute Center for Global Development, which has its main office in Washington, DC, published a study in 2022. Out of 87 emerging countries, they show how 56 have suffered a decline in educational quality since the 1960s. There are several countries, including Nigeria, Bangladesh, and India, where educational standards have dropped. Bangladesh is in the finest condition out of all of them, while Nigeria is the worst. Additionally, educational levels have increased in Peru, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The best of them all is Vietnam. Bangladesh is behind Vietnam in terms of primary education.

In 2020, Abhijeet Singh of the Stockholm School of Economics researched Indian, Vietnamese, Peruvian, and Ethiopian students. He observed that the 5 to 8 years old Vietnamese pupils were doing better than the other students. Those Vietnamese children’s ability to multiply would have increased by 21percent if they had the opportunity to go to school for an additional year. In India, it only increases by 6 percent. However, the results of surveys conducted to determine the level of proficiency of elementary students in Bangladesh are uninspiring.

Equity in education is a prerequisite for receiving a high-quality education. Although Bangladesh is still far behind Vietnam in this category, it is doing better than many other countries. Vietnam has put a lot of effort into reducing educational inequality. It is vital to pay teachers in underdeveloped areas more in order to encourage qualified educators to travel and deliver high-quality education to underserved communities. Equal opportunities in all schools are strongly supported by the Vietnamese government.

In this regard, Bangladesh has taken a lot of steps - creating infrastructure for educational institutions in remote areas, creating a lottery admissions system, offering stipends, etc. But because Bangladesh hasn’t been able to put in place a specific pay scale for teachers in those places, qualified teachers aren’t venturing to those localities.

There is no guarantee that Vietnamese teachers are more qualified than Bangladeshi counterparts. However, the teachers get a lot of training and at the same time they can apply their creativity independently to make their students creative. The Corona period has shown that Bangladeshi teachers may facilitate effective teaching and learning without much planning or guidance. In light of such a severe Corona pandemic shock, according to BBS and UNICEF research, these teachers serve as the primary role models for Bangladeshi secondary school students.

However, this role of teachers was only temporary. After Corona or with the introduction of this new curriculum, this teaching certification is no longer noticeable. This improvement in education has benefited the Vietnamese economy. Bangladesh did experience it, albeit far less frequently than in Vietnam. Bangladesh’s educational system and Vietnam’s are similar in another respect. In other words, the growth of these two countries is not keeping up with the rise in educational quality. For instance, neither of these two countries’ educational systems can adequately produce the workforce with soft talents (soft skills) that these two countries’ commercial enterprises currently require.

However, what we can learn from Vietnam is that our educators can raise the quality of education to that of Vietnam if we can improve education administration, encourage qualified teachers to work in remote areas and promote educational equality, and give them more training and autonomy. But just as Vietnam’s provinces devote 20 percent of their budget to education, we must do the same.

Writer: Member of Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) and former director General of Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE); and former director general of National Academy for Educational Management (NAEM)