Vietnam’s impressive results in the 2012 Program for International Student Assesment (PISA) became a big surprise following their publication last December. Vietnam ranked 17 among the 61 participating countries and its Mathematics score was 511, which is higher than the 494 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries average.
This is particularly relevant because Vietnam is one of worst-off countries, socioeconomically speaking, not to say the worst of all participants, but in PISA 2012, it achieved fairly good results. What is Vietnam’s secret?