He said 10th grade enrollment will follow a roadmap. Only when the public school system is sufficient to meet demand will the city move toward non-exam-based admission.

"The 1st HCMC Party Congress for the 2025-2030 term set the goal of 300 classrooms per 10,000 school-age residents (from age 3 to under 18). Currently, the Department of Education and Training is coordinating with localities to review land funds, continuing to invest in and upgrade facilities according to the roadmap to build more schools, including high schools," Hieu said.

For many years, 10th grade enrollment in HCMC has faced difficulties due to the uneven distribution of the high school system, while the population has increased rapidly in industrial parks and export processing zones. This has led to sharp fluctuations in admission benchmarks in some areas, forcing many students to travel far from home to school, or missing the opportunity to enter public schools.

Recently, the Culture and Social Affairs Committee of the HCMC People’s Council recommended that the city People’s Committee and relevant departments review and adjust the school network planning to better match actual demand in each area. 

This should be based not on administrative boundaries but on student numbers and service radius. The committee also called for improved forecasting and socio-economic orientation for each area to determine the scale and number of schools for the 2026–2030 period, with a vision to 2045.

In addition, the city needs to pay closer attention to ensuring land funds for education development, prioritizing the use of public land, cleared land, and land that can be built on as soon as possible. At present, many plots zoned for education are located in densely populated residential areas, where site clearance and compensation face difficulties, along with legal obstacles that hinder implementation.

The Culture and Social Affairs Committee of the HCMC People’s Council also proposed converting the Long Thanh My High School project into a combined secondary and high school.

According to the HCMC Department of Education and Training, in the 2026–2027 school year, the city has nearly 172,000 grade 9 students, the highest number ever recorded. After the merger, HCMC has 176 public high schools, including four high schools for the Gifted, including Le Hong Phong, Tran Dai Nghia, Hung Vuong, and Le Quy Don.

In the 2026 grade 10 admissions season, HCMC plans to enroll about 70 percent of secondary graduates into public high schools, equivalent to around 120,000 students.

Thuy Nga