Vietnam orders crackdown on school violence, harmful online content

Deputy Prime Minister Le Thanh Long recently signed Directive No. 3 on behalf of the prime minister, focusing on preventing and rolling back school violence while ensuring safety and security in educational environments nationwide.

According to the directive, while education authorities have made progress in ensuring school safety in recent years, several serious incidents of student violence outside schools have alarmed the public.

These cases have affected students’ physical and mental health and raised concerns about the broader learning environment.

To address these challenges, the prime minister has instructed the Ministry of Education and Training to take the lead in coordinating with other ministries and local authorities to implement a comprehensive set of measures.

These include strictly enforcing regulations on school safety, strengthening moral education, lifestyle education, behavioral culture, and life skills, and promptly correcting and strictly handling violations of ethics and conduct in schools.

The ministry is also tasked with reviewing and revising existing regulations, or issuing new ones on ethics, life skills, and cultural conduct.

Public awareness campaigns are to be expanded to increase the responsibility of school administrators, teachers, students, families, and communities in preventing school violence and intervening early when risks emerge.

The directive calls for wider use of information technology and artificial intelligence to monitor students, helping schools identify risks and deploy timely preventive and educational solutions.

The education ministry is also required to promote psychological counseling and school social work services in schools.

The Ministry of Public Security is instructed to work closely with education authorities to provide training on self-protection skills, legal awareness, and prevention of social evils.

Police forces are also tasked with maintaining security in areas surrounding schools and coordinating the handling of student-related legal violations to prevent repeat offenses.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health is assigned to lead child protection programs, operate the national child protection hotline effectively, and coordinate early intervention for children who are victims of violence, including school-related cases.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism is responsible for directing media agencies to increase communication on preventing school violence and improving online content governance.

Authorities are ordered to promptly block, dismantle, and remove harmful and toxic information on the Internet, especially content that glorifies violence or illegal behavior, and to strictly handle violations in coordination with police.

Provincial and municipal administrations must develop specific plans tailored to local conditions, clearly assigning responsibilities under the principle of ‘six clarities’: clear person, clear task, clear authority, clear responsibility, clear timeline, and clear results.

Schools are urged to strengthen cooperation with families, ensuring regular communication about students’ behavior and learning progress.