Schools that designate English as Foreign Language 1 would teach it from grade 1 alongside Vietnamese, math, ethics, nature and society, physical education and the arts, under a draft revision of the General Education Program that the Ministry of Education and Training has put out for public comment until Aug. 29.

The subject would run 70 periods a year in grades 1 and 2 and 140 periods in grades 3 through 5.

Students could also take electives including ethnic minority languages or another foreign language.

English is compulsory only from grade 3 at present, though schools with the classrooms and teachers to support it may already offer two periods a week from grade 1 as an elective.

Across a 35-week school year, the proposed 70 periods work out to two periods a week.

The ministry said the revision serves the government's goal of making English a second language in schools, approved in a decision on Oct. 27, 2025.

That scheme's first phase runs to 2030 and calls for compulsory English from grade 1 at every general education institution in the country, putting the draft circular's start date two years early. Grade 2 would follow in 2029-2030.

Students at Tran Dai Nghia Primary School in Binh Hung Hoa Ward, Ho Chi Minh City, August 2026. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

The draft would also require every general education student to study one foreign language, designated Foreign Language 1.

Primary pupils could be introduced to a second language as an elective, and from grade 6 students could formally add one, designated Foreign Language 2, depending on their preference and what their school can provide.

Instruction would cover listening, speaking, reading and writing together and run unbroken from basic education into the career-oriented upper grades, benchmarked against Vietnamese and international proficiency frameworks.

The policy traces to a conclusion issued by the Politburo on Aug. 12, 2024, which directed education authorities to raise students' foreign language ability and move English toward second-language status in schools. The conclusion extends Resolution 29, the Party Central Committee's education reform program adopted in November 2013.

The wider second-language push covers roughly 50,000 educational institutions and nearly 30 million children, pupils and university students, and will require about 22,000 more English teachers, 12,000 in preschools and nearly 10,000 in primary schools, the ministry estimates.

The ministry also expects to upskill at least 200,000 serving teachers to teach their subjects in English, and aims to have every student learning English as a second language by 2035.