HCMC – The Ministry of Education and Training has unveiled a plan to make English the country’s second language by 2045, aiming for widespread use in teaching, management, and other educational activities.
The ministry is drafting a scheme, “Making English the Second Language in Schools in the 2025-2035 Period, with a Vision Toward 2045,” which would be rolled out across nearly 50,000 institutions, involving some 30 million students and one million teachers and officials, the Vietnam News Agency reported.
To meet the target, the education sector is expected to recruit around 12,000 preschool teachers of English and nearly 10,000 primary school teachers of English, while retraining at least 200,000 educators capable of teaching in English by 2030.
Key tasks under the scheme include raising public awareness, improving legal frameworks and policies, building the teaching workforce, designing curricula and materials, reforming testing and assessment, applying technology and artificial intelligence, expanding international cooperation and social engagement, and strengthening emulation and rewards.
According to Thai Van Tai, head of the Secondary Education Department at the ministry, the roadmap will be implemented in three phases: 2025-2030, 2030-2040, and 2040-2045, with a set of seven criteria for evaluating each education level.
The target marks a five-year delay from the draft announced in March, which originally aimed for English to become the second language by 2035, with all general education students studying English as such.
