Surprising results in the 2012 edition of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that Vietnam performs stunningly well in literacy and numeracy skills. Better than some wealthier countries. Caine Rolleston presented Young Lives findings at a workshop hosted by the Liaison Agency Flanders-Europe (vleva) and the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance (VVOB) to discuss these questions on 18 September 2014.

1. Learning Outcomes,
School Quality and Equity:
What is Different about
the Vietnamese System?
Caine Rolleston

2. YOUNG LIVES HOUSEHOLD STUDY
Young Lives longitudinal survey of
children, households & communities
every 3 years since 2002
• 12,000 index children
• Two cohorts now aged 13
and 19
• Ethiopia, India, Peru,
Vietnam
• 20 sentinel sites in each
country
• Include comparable
learning assessments of
maths and literacy

3. SCHOOL SURVEYS
• School surveys since 2010
• Focus on learning & learning progress, school and
teacher effectiveness
• Index children and their class peers
• Total 3,284 pupils in Grade 5 in Vietnam, 176
classes in 91 school sites
• Longitudinal test design reflect curricular
expectations at the beginning and the end of the
school year
• School, class observations, teacher pedagogical
content tests, attitude questionnaires
• Allows estimation of school quality

4. GNI IS HIGHEST IN PERU AND VERY SIMILAR IN
VIETNAM AND INDIA
8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Peru
Vietnam
India
Ethiopia
GNI per capita 1995-2010 ($ 2000, PPP)

5. HOUSEHOLD TEST DATA:
AT AGE 5 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT LEVELS ARE SIMILAR,
ESPECIALLY BETWEEN VIETNAM AND INDIA
Mean
Score
(%)

6. BY AGE 8 CHILDREN IN VIETNAM OUTPERFORM OTHER COUNTRIES
IN MATHS. The POOREST IN VIETNAM PERFORM BETTER THAN
ALMOST ALL OTHERS
Mean (Household) Maths Test Scores at Age 8 (%)

7. BY AGE 15 THE GAP IN MATHS PERFORMANCE BETWEEN
VIETNAM AND INDIA IS VERY LARGE
Site-level average maths score at age 14-15
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
India Vietnam

8. WIDENING GAPS ARE DRIVEN BY DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING
PROGRESS OVER TIME BETWEEN SYSTEMS: AGE 5 TO 8
20 40 60 80
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
CDA-Q Score R2 %
Ethiopia Peru
India Vietnam

9. PROGRESS AGES 12 TO 15

10. WHILE PUPILS IN VIETNAM KEEP UP WITH THE CURRICULUM, IN INDIA THEY
FALL PROGRESSIVELY BEHIND
Pupils’ abilities remain
in-line with the
curriculum in Vietnam
but the curriculum in
India is progressively
‘over-ambitious’
(pupils fail to progress
according to
expectations)

11. VIETNAM AND INDIA: SCHOOL-SYSTEM QUALITY
INDICATORS (FROM SCHOOL SURVEYS)
Indicator Vietnam India
Mean class size 27.61 16.23
Mean years of teacher experience 17.47 7.71
Mean monthly teacher salary
(USD/Month)
164 226
% of teachers with no formal teacher
training qualification
0% 16.50%
Teacher absenteeism 2.34 days per year 35.12% pupils said ‘
my class teacher often does
not come to school’
All children have access to maths
textbooks
96.16% 60.84%
Teacher always checks/marks maths
homework
41.28% 18.06%

12. THE REASON FOR BETTER PERFORMANCE OVERALL IN VIETNAM
LIES PARTLY IN LOWER LEVELS OF INEQUALITY
HIGH AVERAGE PERFORMANANCE LINKED TO LOW DISPERSION

13. TEST SCORES VARY BETWEEN SCHOOLS IN PERU AND
VIETNAM BUT ARE LESS DISPERSED IN VIETNAM
10 15 20
0 5
Number of Schools
School Mean Maths Scores, Vietnam
300 400 500 600 700
Mean Maths Score
10 15 20
0 5
Number of Schools
School Mean Maths Scores, Peru
300 400 500 600 700
Mean Maths Score
School test scores scaled to mean 500 and standard deviation 100

14. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEST SCORES AND HOME
BACKGROUND IS STRONGER IN PERU THAN VIETNAM
400 450 500 550 600
Maths Performance By Wealth Index
0 .25 .5 .75 1
Household Wealth Index
95% CI Vietnam
Peru

15. IN VIETNAM, ETHNIC MINORITY PUPILS PERFORM LESS WELL THAN KINH,
BUT NO EVIDENCE THAT THE GAP WIDENS DUE TO SCHOOLING IN G5
Maths Vietnamese
First Test Second Test Gain First Test Second Test Gain
Kinh 508.74 549.77 41.03 511.41 513.32 1.90
Ethnic
Minority
438.55 503.66 65.12 419.76 481.31 61.55
Difference 70.19*** 46.11*** 24.08*** 91.65*** 32.01*** 59.65***
Total 500.00 544.03 44.03 500.00 509.33 9.33
Vietnamese Mathematics

16. DIFFERENT GROUPS OF CHILDREN MAY BENEFIT FROM
SCHOOL QUALITY DIFFERENTLY
There are 2 main ways through which school quality may have
differential impacts on pupils’ attainments.
Differential school effectiveness along SES
BETWEEN SCHOOLS
Are poorer children accessing
lower quality schools?
(selection into schools)
WITHIN SCHOOLS
Are poorer children benefiting
less from school quality than
their more advantaged
counterparts?

17. UNEQUAL ACCESS: PRIVATE SCHOOL ATTENANCE IS
ACCELERATING IN RURAL INDIA WITH A WIDENING
GENDER GAP

18. SOME SCHOOLS ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN OTHERS IN VIETNAM, BUT THIS
100
-50
-100
50
0
IS NOT STRONGLY LINKED TO PUPILS’ BACKGROUNDS
0 10 20 30 40 50
School Value-Added Rank
Which Schools Add More Value in
G5?
Not particularly more
advantaged pupils
Slightly better physical resources
Not better teacher subject
knowledge
More teachers with degrees
More positive teacher attitudes
e.g.
“The influence of a student’s
home experience can be
overcome by good teaching”
Teachers more often evaluated
School Value-Added: Learning progress attributable
to schools after removing prior attainment and
background effects

19. CHILDREN’S HOME BACKGROUNDS EXPLAIN MORE OF THE
VARIANCE IN ATTAINMENT IN INDIA AND PERU THAN IN VIETNAM
Controlling for pre-school scores,
children’s home backgrounds (at
age 5) explain much more of the
variation in test scores (at age 11)
in Peru than in Vietnam or India
In maths, backgrounds account for
a large proportion of the variance
in Peru and much less in Vietnam
Systems where background effects
are large are arguably more
inequitable - ‘reproducing’ home
advantage/disadvantage
0.4
0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
Vietnam India Peru
Proportion of Variance in Test Scores Explained
Mathematics Language

20. SCHOOLS EXPLAIN MORE OF THE VARIANCE IN ATTAINMENT
IN INDIA AND PERU COMPARED WITH VIETNAM
• ‘School fixed effects’ capture
school-level factors (school
quality), controlling for pupil
backgrounds, pre-school test
scores
• School quality in India and Peru
accounts for more of the
variance in test scores than in
Vietnam
• School systems in Peru and India
more heterogeneous, school a
child attends appears to matter
more than in Vietnam
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Vietnam India Peru
Proportion of Variance in Test Scores Explained
Mathematics Language

21. WITHIN THE SAME SCHOOL, DISADVANTAGED PUPILS
MAKE LESS PROGRESS IN PERU, BUT NOT IN VIETNAM
-0.18
0.41*
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
Vietnam Peru
Proportion
of 1 SD of
maths test
score
distribution
Who benefits from an
increase in school quality? –
compare effect on richest 40%
to poorest 60% (separate FE)
In Vietnam, schools are
equally effective in teaching
Maths to children
irrespectively of their
background.
In Peru, by contrast, schools
significantly less effective at
teaching children from
disadvantaged backgrounds

22. POSITIVES
• Almost all schools have basic facilities - electricity,
toilets, text books, basic learning materials etc.
• Overall differences across sites on basic quality
indicators are small
• Pupils from disadvantaged sites/backgrounds make
good progress on the curriculum in G5
• Disadvantaged pupils attend schools with lower
levels of some assets but are often in smaller
classes
• The relationship between school quality and pupils’
backgrounds is fairly weak
• Primary schooling in Vietnam is relatively equitable
by comparison

23. TEACHERS IN VIETNAM KNOW WHAT PUPILS KNOW
650
600
550
500
450
400
(AND NEED TO KNOW)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Young Lives Test Score
Teacher Reported Test Score

24. CAVEATS
• Large differences in home background advantage
between sites
• Large differences in achievement between the most
(urban Da Nang) and least advantaged sites
(mountainous Lao Cai)
• Notable differences in test score by ethnicity
(Kinh/minority)
• Larger differences on more sophisticated school
resources (i.e. library, internet, computers),
particularly between Da Nang and the other sites
• Pupils in more advantaged sites receive more periods
of teaching per week
• Effects of extra classes etc. difficult to account for
• Gaps at entry to Grade 5 require further efforts to
equalise learning very early on.

25. DROP-OUT BETWEEN AGES12 AND 15 IS HIGHEST IN VIETNAM
• High drop-out at completion of junior secondary stage (age
14)
• Higher among boys
• May suggest PISA results are an overestimate

26. PUPILS IN VIETNAM PERFORM VERY WELL ON EQUATIONS AND
ALGEBRA INCLUDING USING COMPLEX FRACTIONS
…BUT POORLY ON SIMPLER? PROBLEM SOLVING QUESTIONS
(SUGGESTING ROTE LEARNING)
39%
33%

27. WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THE VIETNAMESE SYSTEM?
Equity-oriented centralised public school system
• Less evidence that disadvantaged pupils attend lower
quality schools
• Less evidence that schools are less effective for
disadvantaged pupils
High-performance for the majority linked to equity
orientation
• Emphasis on ‘fundamental’ or minimum school quality
levels (especially in disadvantaged areas)
• Common curricula & text books in use matched
closely to pupils’ learning levels
• Commitment to ‘mastery’ by all pupils - use of regular
assessment by teachers
• Teacher knowledge (YL curriculum tests) is similar
between more and less disadvantaged areas,
absenteeism is low across almost all schools

28. FINDING OUT MORE
caine.rolleston@qeh.ox.ac.uk
www.younglives.org.uk