Since the inception of Vietnam as an independent country, the people and the Government of Vietnam have consistently recognized education as a national priority. Since 2008, the Government of Vietnam has been spending 20% of its budget on education. The government’s strong commitment to education and long-standing cultural and social support for education have led to significant progress in the sector.

Early childhood care and education was made an official department under the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in 1991. Since then, universal access to ECE has been a priority of MOET at the central government level as well as the provincial authorities at the local level, with remarkable achievements gained.

Universal pre-school education for five-year-old children has been prescribed in the 2009 Education Law, marking a major transformation of Vietnam’s early childhood education over the past 70 years. The Prime Minister also approved a project on universal pre-school education for five-year-old children during 2010-2015. By April 2017, Vietnam announced that the country had met the goal of giving all five-year-old children access to pre-school education.

Vietnam has made significant progress in meeting accessibility, affordability, accountability, sustainability and social justice goals in ECE. However, there remain significant gaps in pre-school education across regions in Vietnam, especially in terms of shortage of classrooms, physical facilities as well as shortage of qualified teachers in disadvantaged localities, including the northern, central and sout central mountainous areas and industrial parks. Ongoing investment, both financial and in terms of human resources, is required to continue strengthening ECE more uniformly across the country.