ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to clarify the balance between the public and private sectors, and between academic and vocational education, in upper secondary (US) education under the policy for the privatization of education (Xa hoi hoa Giao duc) in Vietnam across two decades, roughly from the beginning of the 1990s to the end of the 2000s. By analyzing the macro data of the proportion of US students on two axes (public-private and academic-vocational) during the last two decades, this study tentatively concludes that the private sectors for both the academic and vocational tracks in the transitional era in Vietnam have functioned as temporary, flexible “buffers” for accommodating the social requirements of people seeking academic upward mobility and in channeling others into vocational education as the public sector develops further.
