Vietnam lacks tens of thousands of classrooms ahead of new school year

Speaking at an education conference held on Tuesday, Tran Thanh Dam, head of the ministry’s Planning and Finance Department, reported that the classroom shortage remains acute in densely populated areas and remote, mountainous, or disadvantaged regions.

Current estimates show that Vietnam lacks around 27,950 preschool classrooms and 7,490 elementary school classrooms needed to meet the ‘one class-one room’ standard and ensure two learning sessions per day.

Besides, nearly 6,500 classrooms are still those borrowed from other agencies and organizations.

Vietnam currently has over 618,000 classrooms in public schools, with 89.6 percent meeting permanent construction standards.

However, other facilities such as libraries, science labs, staff offices, housing for teachers, canteens, dormitories, toilets, and clean water infrastructure remain insufficient in many areas.

The dearth is not confined to rural or mountainous regions.

Urban areas experiencing rapid population growth such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are also struggling to keep up.

Tran The Cuong, director of the Hanoi Department of Education and Training, said that the capital is building 43 new schools for the upcoming school year, set to formally start in September, to ease enrollment pressure.

However, the Vietnamese capital still faces hotspots of overcrowding due to fast-paced urbanization.

Ho Chi Minh City, with over 2.6 million students, is targeting a ratio of 300 classrooms per 10,000 school-aged residents, said Nguyen Van Hieu, head of the municipal Department of Education and Training.

To help ease traffic and optimize school placements, the city is pioneering the use of GIS mapping for admissions based on proximity.

GIS, or geographic information system, is a computer system designed to capture, store, analyze, manage, and present all types of spatial or geographical data, according to the Vietnam News Agency.