Teach for Viet Nam

Although most Vietnamese children have attended school, students in rural and remote areas have limited access to subjects such as English, STEM, and entrepreneurship education. The Vietnam public education system continues to face significant challenges in developing high-quality human resources. Shortages of teachers in subjects such as English and Information Technology persist, especially in border and disadvantaged regions, while there are an abundance of experienced teachers in the urban areas.

Several systemic issues including inequality in learning opportunities, standardised curricula and gaps between policy and implementation that have underscored the maximum potential of individuals, neglecting their background and growing process. There has also been a performance-driven culture, which pays attention to high-achieving students and leave an enormous unskilled workforce behind. To make matters worse, a lack of information and financial hardships in the rural and remote areas has inevitably put more pressures and kill their creativity, resulted in an increasing dropout rates among students under 18 who leave school to financially support their families, further narrowing their future career path.

Therefore, building a high-quality and equitable public education system remains a major challenge requiring joint efforts from the community.

The Leadership Development Fellowship is a globally recognized program within the Teach For All network. It recruits young professionals from diverse backgrounds to teach in public schools for two years while simultaneously implementing community development projects and building long-term, sustainable education ecosystems.

Specifically:

• The program is a full-time two-year paid fellowship that provides professional training and coaching, connects participants with national and international experts. This would equip them with specialise skills and pedagogical proficiency. Through immersing two years in struggling public schools to teach English, STEM, and Entrepreneurship Education under a collective leadership approach, they can directly generate positive impacts for students, teachers or parent from local communities.
• During the two-year placement, Fellows co-create community projects with teachers, district and local education authorities, parents, and private sector partners. This co-creation model mobilises local resources and establishes sustainable education ecosystems tailored to the specific needs of each province. Thus, Teach For Vietnam would act as an education ecosystem builder for each local.

Objective

How would our education system transform if our purpose went beyond merely providing access to resources and chasing academic medals? What if, instead, our true mission was to help students become aware of their own futures—guided by deep empathy, genuine love, and a relentless dedication to overcome every barrier on their path to success defined by their very unique strengths? What would teachers teach, and what would students truly learn, if we devoted ourselves to unlocking their boundless potential? Where each child can possess a distinctive identity, fully forge their own destiny and uplift society as a whole?

Teach For Viet Nam was born as a response to those questions, aiming to build an equitable, innovative, and comprehensive public education system where no child is left behind. Under the belief "It takes a village to raise a child". TFV has gathered resources from the community, authorities, civil and private sector within the education system to co-build a sustainable ecosystem for an equitable children education future.

Vision

The program faced significant challenges in its initial phase. To first recruit talented youth for teaching and community development in rural areas, the program needed to build a highly attractive and robust value proposition. Additionally, it also navigated obstacles in policy advocacy to introduce STEM education into the mainstream public education system or ensuring financial sustainability through fund-raising and revenue generation. Another critical hurdle was the requirement of a strong support network to prevent teacher burnout when expanding to highly remote and border regions. Through continuous and dedicated efforts, the program has successfully dismantled the obstacles and impacted over 36,000 students and 3,000 teachers. This milestone serves as the core motivation for Teach for Vietnam to sustain and expand its future initiatives.

Implementation Process - Scope

Through the Leadership Development Fellowship, Teach For Viet Nam has addressed inequalities, promoted equity and advanced education quality and considered every possible aspect that may impact children, parents, schools, community and policies across Vietnam. The program would recruit young leaders from diverse industries, provide them with pedagogical and leadership training, and place them in rural public schools for two years. During this time, Fellows would not only perform teachings in schools but also implement community-based education projects and collaborate closely with schools, parents, and local authorities to develop context-specific solutions.

TFV believes that once Fellows have gained a deep understanding of teachers’ perspectives, local challenges, and systemic issues, they become long-term change agents in education. With the equipped skills and knowledge, they can piece every puzzle in the education sector together, thus spreading positive impacts to every class, every area. And above all, they would set the utmost education system for every child in Vietnam.

Cost

Driven by a profound concern for Vietnam education system, Teach for Vietnam has tirelessly cultivated a new generation of qualified educators. They are not merely subject-matter experts but are compassionate mentors who truly listen to their student's aspirations, empathise with the challenges teachers face to spark significant change through small yet meaningful actions.

Teach for Vietnam chose to "build people" to cultivate the future. It begins by empowering Pioneering Fellows, nurturing both their leadership potential and pedagogical mastery. Together with this dedicated team, the program strives to ensure that every single hour a child spends in the classroom is an hour of quality, inspiration, and growth.

TFV focuses on developing people as the foundation for scaling educational impact by strengthening leadership capacity and pedagogical excellence. Upon participation, Fellows would receive a monthly salary of approximately 8,100,000 VND along with relevant benefits during their placement. Besides building the internal force, TFV also dived into addressing education issues by coordinating with schools, parents and educational agencies to bring holistic changes in education quality.

After seven years, Teach For Viet Nam has developed 82 Leadership Fellows, partnered with 111 schools, supported more than 36,000 students, assisted over 3,000 teachers, and positively influenced more than 2,000 parents. The program has generated measurable improvements in teaching quality, leadership development, and community engagement, raising awareness and support from parents to children during their learning process.

As a member of the Teach For All global network spanning 61 countries, Teach For Viet Nam benefits from international knowledge exchange, the adoption of global best practices, and collaboration toward worldwide education equity goals.

Teach For All operates under a desire to give every child on this planet the education opportunity they deserve, irrespective of their background or identity. With the dedicated effort, Teach for Vietnam has taken small steps to achieve towards this shared goal.

The organisation has set an ambitious target of developing 10,000 Leadership Fellows nationwide by 2030. This is an important step towards education quality enhancement in Vietnam where we invest in exceptional, passionate teachers to generate positive impacts to students.

Meanwhile, through our partnership with the Teach For All network, Teach For Vietnam is actively learning from international best practices, sharing proven methods, and contributing to the global mission of educational equity and excellence. Because of this collective wisdom and support, scaling the Teach For Vietnam model can be achieved both rapidly and effectively in the coming years.