Choosing the right textbooks: The first step toward stable, high-quality education

Selecting an appropriate textbook set is increasingly vital, ensuring stability and consistency in teaching and learning, cost efficiency, and equal access for students nationwide under the 2018 General Education Program.

A suitable set of textbooks today extends far beyond the physical book in students’ hands. It must be a complete learning ecosystem, from textbooks for all subjects, including specialized ones, to local education materials, teacher guides, workbooks, and multimedia digital resources.

Building a rich digital ecosystem with interactive exercises, videos, audio clips, simulations, and animations, supported by strong teams of authors and technology experts, allows teachers and students to access knowledge in a more modern and flexible way. This is also an essential step toward transitioning to the “smart education” model being promoted by the government.

For many families facing financial hardship, a textbook set is only truly “suitable” when its cost is optimized from the stages of writing and design to printing and distribution.

Keeping prices at a reasonable level, based on principles of efficiency and transparency, not only reduces pressure on parents but also reflects the social responsibility of publishers. This is a crucial criterion to ensure equal access to education for all students nationwide.

In practice, a unified set of textbooks across localities minimizes disruptions, helping teachers avoid repeatedly changing materials or undergoing new training. The trust of teachers and parents is also an important indicator of textbook quality.

When multiple schools and provinces use the same set, the organization of assessments, examinations, and inter-school or inter-regional professional activities becomes more convenient, thereby improving management effectiveness and teaching quality.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Xuan Nhi, standing vice president of the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges and former Deputy Minister of Education and Training, stated that adopting a unified textbook set would eliminate disorder and negative practices in the book-selection process. Economically, the benefits are significant. With tens of millions of students, printing and distributing multiple sets of textbooks each year leads to unnecessary waste.

According to Nhi, having a single textbook set does not limit flexibility or creativity in education. The core issue lies in teaching methodology.

The supply of textbooks must remain stable and timely, even amid natural disasters, epidemics, or market fluctuations, he said, adding the selected textbook set must have clear legal foundations, no copyright risks, and a widespread printing and distribution network that reaches remote, mountainous, and island areas.

This is a matter of “educational security”, ensuring every student receives their textbooks at the beginning of the school year and facilitating the implementation of policies such as free textbook distribution, state-funded procurement or textbook bidding, Nhi noted.

A high-quality textbook set must reflect consistent educational philosophy and methodology, with seamless progression from Grade 1 to Grade 12, enabling teachers to design subject-based or competency-based teaching plans more effectively.

Textbooks must also support tests and assessments aimed at developing competencies and qualities - a core requirement of the 2018 General Education Program. This helps reduce pressure on teachers and ensures consistency in school-level and provincial-level professional management.

Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh, former director of the Department of Professional Education under the Ministry of Education and Training, emphasized that the goal is not merely “one textbook set for the whole country” but rather establishing national knowledge standards, ensuring fairness for students, and fostering creative thinking and self-learning ability.

This is a tool for improving educational quality and preparing a solid foundation for Vietnamese students in the digital era and global integration. In this context, a unified textbook set should be understood as unity within diversity, with core content aligned nationally, while approaches to learning may vary depending on lesson characteristics, grade levels, and the technological conditions of each classroom to achieve optimal effectiveness, he said.