Marketing and Networking in Vietnam

On the official invitation of Mr. Nguyen Tuan Khanh, the Chairman Provincial Government of Vinh Phuc Office, the Principal Ms Linda Lee, Deputy Director Mr Mike Lam and Ms Dinh visited Vinh Phuc province, with the objective of promoting HCIS scholarship and exploring possible collaborations between HCIS and the Education department there in areas such as student and teacher exchange programmes.

On 21 April, the HCIS team was hosted to a warm reception by Mr. Nguyen Van Huyen, Director of Education and Training Department. It was only 6 months ago that we first met Chairman Nguyen when he led a delegation including Director Nguyen to visit HCIS to learn about the IB curriculum and a private international school in Singapore.

One thing led to another and this time, we were very excited to pay a return courtesy visit to Vinh Phuc, building on the new found friendship with Mr. Nguyen Van Huyen and his team in the Education and Training Department. It was a formal setting with the media and department key personnel on hand. Mr. Nguyen Van Huyen related that 11 students from Vinh Phuc have since been offered Singapore MOE ASEAN Scholarships.

Our discussion touched on several possible areas of collaboration, such as teacher attachment, student-initiated online projects and even community service projects in Vietnam which could potentially be planned for our IB1 CAS.

Principal Linda delivered a presentation at the Vinh Phuc High School for the Gifted, introducing HCIS and our 6-Year integrated curriculum to a large crowd of more than 200 principals and key personnel of all the public schools in Vinh Phuc province. Our staff Ms Dinh was on hand to translate the sharing in Vietnamese. Mr. Pham Khuong Duy, the Deputy Director of Education and Training Department strongly urged the principals to be open-minded to learn about an international curriculum like IB, in order to upskill and improve the level of education and professional training of teachers in the province.

The next day, our team visited the top schools in the districts of Vinh Yen and Vinh Tuong. Indeed we are hopeful that they would have suitable candidates for our scholarship though proficiency in the English language may remain a challenge.

Over at Ho Chi Minh City, the team paid a visit to Vietnamese American School (VASchool) where they met the Executive Director Mr. Bui Quang Khoa for a discussion on our scholarship offering. VASchool is a private school chain in Vietnam with 4,000 student enrolment from K1 to Grade 12. What stood out was the emphasis on learning of the English language from young. We look forward to scholarship applicants from VASchool when the scholarship assessments are conducted later in October this year.

The last stop was a meeting with Korean parents in a new urban community in District 7. Our agent Anne Kim had organized the info session and it was good synergy between Principal Linda and her as their presentations resulted in immediate appointments to follow up on the scholarship offering.

Overall, it was a good outreach for HCIS as more people in Vietnam will now know about the school and our brand of education.