Southeast Asian languages to be increasingly taught in Vietnamese schools

As part of a foreign language teaching program for the 2026–35 period announced late last week, the ministry plans to introduce Cambodian in 2028 and Thai and Indonesian from 2030 to help implement agreements Vietnam has with neighboring countries.

Education Minister Nguyen Kim Son had mentioned the plan to introduce Lao during a meeting in early June with Khamphao Ernthavanh, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic to Vietnam.

It will be trialed in areas bordering Laos and expanded once enough teachers are available.

There are more than 14 million students in grades one to 12 and their foreign language options include English, Russian, French, Chinese, German, Japanese, and Korean.

English is taught in all provinces and cities and 40 out of 63 localities, which have been merged into 34 since July, offer the others too.

French has the largest number of students of the latter languages at 30,700, followed by Japanese (20,800) and Chinese (14,400).

These include students enrolled in seven-and 10-year programs, those studying a second foreign language and those in pilot programs.

To add more languages, as well as to teach some subjects in foreign languages, the ministry plans to hire more teachers, including native speakers.

It also aims to enhance the use of technology and artificial intelligence platforms.