In Vietnamese thoughts, ‘international schools’ means foreign invested schools which apply modern teaching methodsand follow foreign teaching curricula.

Parents believe that with foreign curricula and teaching in English, international schools are better than Vietnamese schools, and therefore, they are willing to pay high tuition to send children to the schools.

The tuition set by Gateway International School for first graders in the 2019-2020 academic year is VND117.7 million. If parents pay for the whole year prior to May 31, they enjoy the discount rate of 5 percent and if they pay prior to July 14, they enjoy discount of 3 percent.

There are numerous ‘international schools’, but state management agencies say all of them are not recognized as ‘international’.

The tuition doesn’t include expenses on learning materials, meals, shuttle buses and overtime care.

The school is advertised as applying modern teaching methodsand teaching in both Vietnamese and English. The lessons in sciences and informatics taught in English are taught by foreign teachers.

It also runs teaching programs in cooperation with foreign schools, including physical education program imported from Japan and Aqua-tots swimming from the US. Japanese is also taught at extracurricular clubs.

The school says that its classrooms are modern and comfortable meeting IFC and Lotus green certificates which ensure the comprehensive development of students.

Gateway is the school where a schoolboy died after being forgotten on a bus.

On August 7, at the press conference held by the Cau Giay district People’s Committee to provide details about the accident, reporters raised questions about the operation of international schools in Cau Giay district.

Surprisingly, Pham Ngoc Anh, head of the Cau Giay district Education and Training Sub-department, affirmed that there is no concept of ‘international school’ in legal documents, and the word ‘international school’ is used by schools to advertise and attract students.

“There are only foreign invested schools in the district,” he said.

Besides Gateway, there are numerous other schools which proclaim they are international schools and set sky high tuition.

Le Viet Khuyen, former deputy director of the Higher Education Department, commented that many parents mistake foreign invested schools for international schools.

It is true that some private schools are allowed to provide international teaching programs. Taking full advantage of this, they have called themselves ‘international schools’. Parents think that all the schools which provide foreign teaching programs are ‘international schools’.

Khuyen said state management agencies have to take responsibility for this, because they know the existence of the self-proclaimed international schools, but did not do anything to stop their claims.

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