Nguyen Viet Anh, 36, who was arrested last April, was found guilty of "engaging in sexual intercourse or other sexual activities with a person aged 13 to under 16." Having sex with a child between 13 and 16 years of age is punishable with up to 15 years in jail.
The court also ruled Friday that Anh must pay the victim’s family VND40 million ($1,730) in compensation.
Anh’s crime came to light after the girl’s family filed a complaint with the local police, saying that she was 12 weeks pregnant.
According to the victim’s family, he had bought her a cell phone to contact her. They only came to know of the relationship after noticing some abnormal signs in her and taking her to hospital, where they discovered she was pregnant.
Anh confessed to the police that he had sex with the girl on multiple occasions at the school since late 2017. The victim was an eighth-grade student then.
Police later carried out a DNA test and identified Anh as the father of the child.
This is not the first time a Vietnamese teacher has been involved in sexual abuse of their students.
Dinh Bang My, former principal of a boarding school in northern Phu Tho Province, was sentenced last week to eight years in prison for sexually abusing nine male students for years in an incident that shocked the public.
According to a 2018 report of the Ministry of Public Security, 80 percent of 1,600 child abuse cases involved sexual assault. Perpetrators most often include people known to the victims like neighbors, relatives, or teachers.
Vietnam recorded 1,547 child sex abuse cases in 2018, down 2.8 percent from a year ago, according to the Ministry of Public Security.