International language certificates in Vietnam’s high school graduation and university admissions: a policy analysis

This study critically examines the Eurocentric foundations of Vietnam's education policy, focusing on the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training's decision to accept IELTS scores as substitutes for the national English examination in high school graduation and university admissions. Utilizing Foucault’s theory of knowledge and power and Carol Bacchi's ‘What's the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) approach as the analytical framework, the paper interrogates how this policy constructs the ‘problem’ of English proficiency and its implications within the Vietnamese educational context. The findings reveal that the policy reflects a Eurocentric bias, privileging international standardized assessments over locally developed educational frameworks. This approach marginalizes students from underprivileged backgrounds who may lack access to resources for international test preparation, thereby exacerbating educational inequities in a Global South educational context.