One preschool here describes itself as bilingual and teaches English in two sessions a week, twenty-five to thirty-five minutes each. Another describes itself with the same word and teaches the whole day in English.
Both may use the same label. The problem is that the label does not tell you how much English your child will actually hear or use. “Bilingual” is not a nationally defined preschool programme category with a single required timetable — it is a description schools write about themselves, and two using it can be offering programmes that barely resemble each other.
What Vietnam does define is narrower, and far more useful to know before a tour.
What the rules actually recognise
For preschools operating under Vietnam’s education programme, three things sit underneath the day.
Vietnamese is the official language of education. The Law on Education — the 2019 law as amended with effect from 1 January 2026, now published as a single consolidated text — puts it plainly: “Tiếng Việt là ngôn ngữ chính thức dùng trong cơ sở giáo dục.” Teaching in a foreign language is left to the Government to regulate. The same article asks one thing of foreign-language teaching that is worth carrying into a tour: it must be organised so learners are taught “liên tục, hiệu quả” — continuously and effectively.
The Vietnamese preschool programme is the required programme for preschools following Vietnam’s national education programme. The Preschool Charter requires it in one line: “Trường mầm non thực hiện Chương trình giáo dục mầm non do Bộ trưởng Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo ban hành.” The Charter has been amended three times, most recently from 15 August 2026, but this clause is unchanged. Foreign-invested preschools authorised to run a foreign preschool programme are additionally governed by the foreign-investment rules, which is why the programme a particular school is licensed to deliver matters.
English at preschool age has its own Ministry programme, and its allocation is modest. In December 2020 the Ministry of Education and Training issued a programme for làm quen với tiếng Anh — “getting acquainted with English” — for children aged three to six, in three age bands. Two details in it are worth knowing:
- It runs only where the family has chosen it. It applies at institutions meeting its requirements “và sự tự nguyện của gia đình trẻ” — with the voluntary agreement of the child’s family. It is an opt-in programme rather than a compulsory English requirement for every preschool child.
- Its allocation is 35 weeks a year, a minimum of two activities a week, each roughly 25 to 35 minutes.
That figure is the allocation inside that one Ministry programme. The regulations cited here do not set a minimum number of English hours that a preschool must provide in order to describe its programme as bilingual. What the figure gives you is a reference point — what the Ministry treats as a reasonable starting allocation for familiarisation at this age — so you can hear how a school’s offer compares.
Notice the verb: getting acquainted with English is not being taught in English, and the Ministry is careful about that difference even where marketing is not.
Three common ways the word is used
These are three practical descriptions, not official categories, ordered by how much English is in the day. The order is not a ranking and more English is not a better school — it is a trade-off, and a later section comes back to that.
English added to the Vietnamese programme. The national programme runs the day with English sessions layered on. This is the shape the Ministry’s programme describes, and what a great many schools mean.
A day timetabled in two languages. Sometimes two homeroom teachers share a room; sometimes the languages alternate by half-day, day or week. This is usually what “50/50” points at — though 50/50 of what: contact hours, homeroom time, or the timetable on paper?
An English-medium day with Vietnamese as a subject. Often described as immersion.
All three get the same word on the website. Which one you are being offered is a question about the timetable, and it has a factual answer.
Ask about hours, not labels
One question does most of the work:
How many hours a week is my child taught in English, and how many in Vietnamese?
Then the parts that get left out of brochures:
- Is the English teacher in the room all day, or visiting for a session? Someone who arrives for forty minutes and leaves is a different arrangement from someone there at drop-off.
- Which language is spoken at lunch, nap, changing and outdoor play? For a three-year-old that is most of the day, and it is where language is actually picked up.
- What happens when the English teacher is away? If the session simply does not run, the timetable is thinner than it looks. That is why it is useful to ask what happens when the usual English teacher is away.
Then ask whether the school can share the weekly timetable, so you can see how the languages are actually allocated across the week.
If you are working through a shortlist, how to choose a preschool in Vietnam covers the rest of the visit.
Who is actually teaching the English
There is a published benchmark here, and it is useful because “native speaker” is not a qualification.
The Ministry’s programme sets out what a Vietnamese teacher delivering it should hold — one of:
- a college-level or higher degree in English, English language or English-language teaching, plus at least 120 hours of training in the programme, of which at least 45 hours are practical and spent in a preschool; or
- a college-level or higher degree in preschool education, plus a certificate of English proficiency at bậc 4 or above.
Bậc 4 is level four of Vietnam’s national foreign-language framework, corresponding to B2 on the Common European Framework. The framework was replaced on 31 May 2026 by a new one running from Pre-A1 to C2, labelled the European way while keeping the old level numbers alongside — so B2 is still bậc 4, and the preschool requirement is unchanged.
B2 English proficiency and early-years teaching qualifications measure different things, so it is worth asking about both.
So the question is not whether the teacher is foreign. It is what they are qualified in, and whether the person on the website is the person in the room.
Where “international” and “integrated” fit
These words describe how a school is set up legally. They are frequently read as describing how much English a child hears, and they do not.
A school with foreign investment running a foreign curriculum has a rule attached: Vietnamese pupils must make up fewer than half of those on the foreign programme at that school — “số học sinh Việt Nam học chương trình giáo dục của nước ngoài phải thấp hơn 50%...” The rule concerns Vietnamese pupils on the foreign programme; it does not apply to pupils who are not Vietnamese. It still shapes who is in the classroom, which is worth knowing when a school is described as international.
A private Vietnamese preschool can also partner with a foreign institution. Since November 2024, private preschools are among the institutions permitted to run integrated programmes with a foreign partner, where that partner has been operating for at least five years and holds recognised accreditation or official quality recognition.
So a school can be Vietnamese-owned with a foreign partner, or foreign-invested, or somewhere in between — and any of them can be marketed as international or bilingual. None of it answers the hours question.
What this doesn’t mean
It does not mean a school running the Ministry’s English programme is cutting corners. That programme is the Ministry’s national programme for helping preschool children get acquainted with English, and a preschool day at three covers a great deal more than language — settling in, playing, eating, resting and learning to get along with other children. A school that says “two sessions a week, and here is who teaches them” is giving you something you can compare.
It does not mean more English is better. Hours in English are hours not in Vietnamese. Families may place different value on English and Vietnamese depending on their circumstances, so the right balance is a family decision, and not one a school can make for you.
And it does not mean anyone is being dishonest. The regulations cited here do not establish a single national definition of a bilingual preschool programme. That is exactly why the word cannot be relied on, and why the timetable can.
If a school is otherwise a good fit, checking that it is still operating is a separate job — how to check a school is still open is the procedure we use.
How we handle language at Tiny Circle
We record what a school publishes about itself, and we keep three different facts apart. A listing can carry a curriculum or framework, a teaching approach, and a programme type — one of international, English immersion, bilingual or Vietnamese — alongside the languages the class is actually delivered in.
Three things we do not do. We do not score or order schools by how much English they teach. We do not count the hours, because we have not sat in the classroom — we show the school’s own label and the date we checked it. And where a claim has an awarding body with a public register, such as IB or Cambridge, we confirm it there before it appears; the school’s own website does not count. Where no register exists we use the weaker accurate word — Montessori-inspired, Reggio-inspired.
The label is also often absent. Plenty of schools do not publish a programme type at all, and where a listing has no entry it means the school has not stated one, not that we forgot to ask.
If a listing’s language or programme information no longer matches what the school publishes, tell us. There is a Suggest a correction link on every page, and it reaches a person.
To browse by area we keep a page for preschools in District 2; the full set is at preschools across the city.
Sources
Every fact in this guide was verified on 23 September 2026 against the current text of each instrument, each linked below. Where an instrument has been amended, replaced or consolidated, the current version is the one cited.
- Law on Education, consolidated text 72/VBHN-VPQH (2026) — Law No. 43/2019/QH14 of 14 June 2019 as amended by Law No. 123/2025/QH15, passed 10 December 2025 and in force 1 January 2026. Article 11 — Vietnamese as the official language of educational institutions, and the requirement that foreign-language teaching be organised for continuous, effective learning — was not among the articles the 2025 amendment changed.
- Circular 52/2020/TT-BGDĐT — Ministry of Education and Training, 31 December 2020, in force 31 March 2021. The Preschool Charter; Article 16(1) requires every preschool to deliver the national preschool programme issued by the Minister. Since amended by Circular 09/2025/TT-BGDĐT, Circular 15/2025/TT-BGDĐT and Circular 51/2026/TT-BGDĐT (signed 30 June 2026, in force 15 August 2026), none of which alters Article 16(1).
- Circular 50/2020/TT-BGDĐT — Ministry of Education and Training, 31 December 2020, in force 31 March 2021. Issues the programme for children aged three to six to get acquainted with English: applied only with the voluntary agreement of the child’s family, 35 weeks a year, a minimum of two activities a week of 25 to 35 minutes each, and the teacher qualifications quoted above. Amended by Circular 09/2025/TT-BGDĐT (12 June 2025, in force 1 July 2025), which reassigns oversight from the district education office to the commune People’s Committee and leaves the allocation, the qualifications and the consent requirement untouched. Full programme text.
- Circular 33/2026/TT-BGDĐT — Ministry of Education and Training, signed 15 April 2026, in force 31 May 2026, replacing Circular 01/2014/TT-BGDĐT. Vietnam’s foreign-language proficiency framework, now seven levels from Pre-A1 to C2 across three tiers, aligned to the Common European Framework, with the previous level numbers retained alongside: B2 corresponds to bậc 4. Announced by the Ministry on 16 April 2026.
- Decree 86/2018/NĐ-CP — Government, 6 June 2018, in force 1 August 2018. Article 39: Vietnamese pupils on a foreign curriculum must number fewer than 50% of those on that curriculum at the institution. Amended by Decree 124/2024/NĐ-CP, signed 5 October 2024 and in force 20 November 2024, which extends educational partnership arrangements to private preschools and private general-education schools, with foreign partners required to have at least five years of operation and accredited or officially recognised quality.