New school year in Ho Chi Minh City: School programs must have at least 2 options

PHOTO: DAO NGOC THACH

On the afternoon of August 20, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training deployed to high schools instructions on selecting content in school programs from the 2025-2026 school year.

Accordingly, Ho Chi Minh City currently has 1,583 schools from primary to high school with more than 51,000 classrooms. The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training stated that public schools directly decide on the contents of the school program and must approve the school council on activities, grade levels, content framework, methods, forms of organization, implementation plans and organizations and units coordinating educational activities, ensuring that students have an environment to practice and apply knowledge into practice.

Implement school programs on a voluntary basis

The principal is fully responsible for selecting and implementing the school program, ensuring implementation conditions such as staff, facilities and appropriate teaching and learning plans. The contents of the school program selected must be licensed by the competent authority, evaluated by the Department of Education and Training and must ensure stability and consistent implementation throughout a grade level.

The school program aims to diversify the forms of teaching and learning organization and educational activities to help students develop and improve the quality of comprehensive educational activities in ethics, intelligence, physical fitness and aesthetics, including moral education, life values education, life skills, STEM/STEAM education, reading culture education, school culture, physical education, arts, financial education. At the same time, develop foreign language skills, digital skills, artificial intelligence (AI) skills, aesthetic skills, etc. for students to form awareness and lifelong learning habits.

The school builds the content of the school program so that students and parents have the right to choose according to the needs of the students.

The plan to implement educational activities in the school program must be approved by the school board and must be informed and agreed upon with parents on a voluntary basis, with appropriate class and time arrangements according to each content in the school program to meet the wishes of students and parents.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training requires schools to have at least two options when developing curriculum content so that students and parents have the right to choose according to their abilities and needs.

Photo: Dao Ngoc Thach

Must organize a survey

Schools must organize surveys and flexibly choose survey forms suitable to the actual conditions of the school and grade level, such as surveys using questionnaires or quick survey software for parents to choose the school's program.

The Department of Education and Training noted that in all cases, there must be full and clear evidence of the survey process and the results of collecting opinions. The survey and collection of opinions from students and parents must ensure the principles of voluntariness, democracy, publicity, transparency and accuracy. The program can only be applied after completing the selection process and receiving the consensus of the majority of parents.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training noted that the cost of implementing the school's program is determined according to legal regulations on prices and Government regulations on the financial autonomy mechanism of public service units, and the revenue and expenditure estimates are built, with the revenue level suitable to the payment capacity of the majority of parents.

The school program must ensure the principle of collecting enough, spending enough and using the collected funds for the right purposes; publicly implementing the collection and spending plan of each collection item to parents before implementation. The collection level must be commensurate with the quality of education and training services. The rate of increase in collection level (if any) must not exceed 15% compared to the collection level implemented in the previous school year.