The Ministry of Education and Training has assured that there will be enough stocks of textbooks based on new curriculums for all school grades starting in the 2020-21 academic year.

The new syllabus is being created after the National Assembly passed a resolution on reforming the curriculum and textbooks, and the ministry has the responsibility of ensuring there are no shortages of the latter.

It has tasked its Vietnam Education Publishing House Limited Company and six other publishers with compiling and publishing the new textbooks.

A National Assessment Council will be set up soon for evaluating the textbooks.

Since last year the Vietnam Education Publishing House has been researching and compiling the textbooks and has even published some first grade textbooks to trial them, an act that has come in for some criticism in the media.

It said 90 percent of the compilation work is complete and all the new textbooks would be submitted to the National Assessment Council for assessment by July.

The six other publishers, all owned by universities, have also said the textbooks would be ready soon and submitted to the National Assessment Council.

Nguyen Xuan Thanh, deputy head of the ministry’s general secondary education department, said after the assessment and final approval are done, the ministry would apprise the publishers about the printing plans to ensure the right number is printed.  

It will issue a circular to educational departments in provinces and cities to help them select the appropriate textbooks from the various options the seven printers will offer.

Minister of Education and Training Phung Xuan Nha explained that the idea behind having a number of different options is to enable schools and teachers to be creative in teaching as envisaged by the programme.