Online IB and IGCSE tutors for students studying in Vietnam

Any school in Vietnam offering the IB or a Cambridge/Edexcel qualification operates as a licensed foreign-invested institution, and that licence typically limits how many Vietnamese citizens the school may enrol relative to foreign-passport students. A separate model exists too — an integrated school running a Vietnamese national stream and an English-medium international stream side by side under one roof — which is different again from a stand-alone IB World School. Which model a family is actually dealing with affects both the compulsory-subject load and, later, how university applications get handled.

For a Vietnamese citizen, enrolling at one of these schools doesn't remove the national curriculum, it narrows it. MOET requires a defined set of Vietnamese-language subjects — literature, history, civics content — taught by separate Vietnamese-curriculum staff on the same campus, running in parallel with the IB or Cambridge timetable. This is probably the single least-understood detail among families new to the system, and the hours involved vary enough by school and grade that it's worth asking the admissions office directly rather than assuming.

Geographically, the IB continuum concentrates in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, where several schools run PYP through DP under one roof, while cities like Da Nang and Nha Trang lean toward the British model — IGCSE followed by AS and A Level — instead of a full IB offering. A family relocating within Vietnam, or simply choosing between cities, needs to know this before assuming a strong DP option in one city has an equivalent nearby.

The families we work with arrive by different routes for different reasons: a posting that will move again in a few years, a return home after time overseas, or a deliberate choice to build toward a foreign university from the start. What they share is a need for a tutor who understands both the syllabus in front of the child and the operating reality around it — the extra compulsory hours, the specific exam series a given school sits, and the genuine shortage of specialist subject teachers outside the two biggest cities.

Every session we run for a Vietnam-based family happens online, timed to Indochina Time so it lands in the evening rather than at an odd hour. We don't send tutors into homes inside Vietnam; that model exists only for families in India, where our tutors are based.

Vietnam's own programme, the 2018 general education curriculum, ends in the Kỳ thi tốt nghiệp THPT — a state exam sat in Grade 12 that decides both graduation and, via a points formula, entry to most Vietnamese public universities. It's marked out of 10 per subject and taught in Vietnamese. Set next to Cambridge IGCSE or the IB Diploma, these aren't three versions of the same thing — they're a domestic leaving exam tied directly to local university admission, a modular subject qualification for mid-teens, and a two-year diploma built around six subjects plus a research and reflection core.

IGCSE, whether Cambridge or Edexcel, is sat subject by subject — typically five to nine of them — around age 16, with Core and Extended tiers in several subjects and grades running A* to G or 9 to 1 depending on the syllabus. On its own it doesn't grant entry to a Vietnamese university; it's a stepping stone toward A Level, the IB Diploma, or occasionally a foundation year abroad. The IB Diploma is a fixed package instead: six subjects at Higher or Standard Level, Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay and CAS, marked 1-7 per subject with 45 points on offer overall.

The table below lines the three up on the questions families actually ask — the exam format, the grading, the language of instruction, and where each one typically leads. None of the three is objectively better; the right one depends on whether the plan is Vietnamese university admission through the national exam, a foreign university system, or keeping both doors open as long as possible.

One planning point worth flagging: IGCSE and A Level follow the UK academic calendar while the national exam follows Vietnam's own school year, so a student switching tracks needs roughly a full year of runway rather than a mid-year jump. Some families deliberately keep a child on IGCSE right through Grade 10 for exactly this reason — it leaves both the A Level and IB DP doors open a little longer, at the cost of sitting one more externally-marked qualification along the way.

Our practical advice to Vietnam families is to settle the destination before the subject list. A student heading toward Vietnamese university admission needs the national track regardless of any international schooling running alongside it; a student heading abroad needs IGCSE, A Level or the DP to be the qualification a foreign admissions office actually reads, with the compulsory Vietnamese-subject hours running in parallel rather than feeding into that application at all.

In most cases, yes: a Vietnamese citizen enrolled at a foreign-invested school is generally required to complete a defined MOET-mandated slice of the national curriculum — usually Vietnamese language and literature, plus some history and civics — alongside the IB or Cambridge timetable, though the exact hours differ by school and grade. It's a subset, not the whole national curriculum, and it sits on top of the international programme rather than replacing any part of it.

How this actually looks on a timetable varies. Some schools run it as a compact daily or twice-weekly block taught by separate Vietnamese-curriculum staff; others weave elements into the school day less visibly. If you're comparing schools, ask each one directly how many weekly hours the compulsory subjects take, because that number determines how much time genuinely remains for DP coursework once the IA and Extended Essay season starts.

This rule follows citizenship, not curriculum choice — a Vietnamese passport holder carries it at a fully IB or Cambridge school regardless of how long the family lived abroad or how confident the child's spoken Vietnamese actually is. We get asked fairly often by returning families about separate Vietnamese-language catch-up support, which is a real but different need from IB or IGCSE subject tutoring, so it's worth flagging early if that applies to your household.

None of this changes what our sessions actually cover: we teach the DP, MYP or IGCSE syllabus itself, and leave the parallel Vietnamese-curriculum subjects to the school. What it does change is the clock — planning tutoring around a longer combined school day than a family used to a purely international system elsewhere might expect.

If your family is weighing a move between a Vietnamese-curriculum school and an international one, get the citizenship and compulsory-subject rules in writing from the school's admissions office first. The details differ between licences and have shifted more than once as MOET has updated its regulations for foreign-invested education.

Applying to a university outside Vietnam, an IB Diploma or A Level result is read the same way any other applicant's qualification would be — no extra Vietnamese paperwork is usually needed for an application submitted from overseas. That worldwide readability is a large part of why Vietnam families choose these qualifications over a purely domestic path when the plan is university abroad.

Using a foreign qualification for entry into a Vietnamese public university works differently and involves an equivalency step. Rather than the national THPT score, a student applying with an IB Diploma or A Level results generally needs the qualification recognised through Vietnam's diploma-equivalency process, coordinated through MOET or the relevant provincial Department of Education and Training, before or alongside the university application itself. Timelines vary, so this is worth starting early rather than close to a deadline.

The table below sketches the shape that process usually takes. Treat it as a general outline rather than a substitute for whatever a specific university or Department of Education and Training currently asks for, since the exact procedure gets updated from time to time and can differ by province.

In practice, a large share of Vietnam-based IB and IGCSE families skip the domestic equivalency route entirely and apply straight to universities abroad — Australia, the UK, the US, Singapore and Canada all take IB Diploma or A Level results as primary admissions evidence, with no Vietnamese recognition step required at all.

Whichever route ends up applying, keep the paperwork together from early on: syllabus codes, statements of results, moderated coursework marks, and each term's school report. Assembling that file takes an afternoon at most and avoids weeks of delay if an equivalency application or an overseas admissions office later asks for something the school has since archived.

Vietnam's IB schools run on the northern-hemisphere calendar, so a school year that starts in August ends with the May exam session. For a DP2 student that squeezes internal assessment drafts, the Extended Essay, TOK components and school mocks into a few crowded months — on top of whatever compulsory Vietnamese-subject coursework is still running. Rather than pacing week to week, we plan backward from the specific deadlines your child's own school has set.

Internal assessments are set and marked in-school, then moderated externally, and their share of the final grade varies — around a fifth in several sciences and maths, more in language and the arts. That structure rewards process over polish: a chemistry student needs a variable they can actually control with the equipment on hand, and a history student needs sources they can genuinely reach, which for many Vietnam-based students means English-language databases the school subscribes to rather than physical archives. Much of our IA tutoring is simply reading the published criteria with the student and pointing to exactly where the current draft loses marks.

The Extended Essay is a 4,000-word independent research paper with a named supervisor; TOK carries an exhibition and a 1,600-word essay on a set title. Both hinge on decisions made early and unglamorously — a question narrow enough to actually answer with sources on hand, and a source list built before the school's mid-year break rather than scrambled together after it.

Where the line sits matters, because the IB is strict about it. Every IA, Extended Essay and TOK submission has to be the student's own work, checked through similarity software. We coach — pointing to a misread criterion, asking the question that exposes a weak argument, modelling a comparable but different problem — and we never write or edit a draft into something a student then hands in as their own.

Cambridge and Edexcel IGCSE candidates in Vietnam sit either the main May/June series or, where a school offers it, October/November — this varies enough between Vietnam's Cambridge schools that it's worth confirming rather than assuming. Because sessions run online, they're timed to Indochina Time, mostly evenings and weekend blocks before mocks, and we keep a running log of errors from each timed paper so it's obvious by the final term which topics still need attention.

The right answer depends on where a student is headed, not what they happen to be best at right now. Engineering or computer science routes abroad point toward HL Mathematics Analysis and Approaches plus a physical science; business or economics routes point toward HL Economics or Mathematics; and a student keeping a Vietnamese university on the table should check that specific institution's subject and score requirements directly, since they vary and aren't always publicised clearly.

Language choice is one decision Vietnam families face that most others don't. A Vietnamese citizen taking Vietnamese A as a school-supported self-taught subject — the usual route, since few schools staff a full class for it — keeps a genuine mother-tongue subject inside the diploma, and for a confident reader and writer that can be a stronger HL or SL choice than an unfamiliar Language B. It's an option families sometimes miss simply because it isn't advertised.

For a student who arrived at an international school without strong prior English, English B rather than English A is usually the safer starting point, even if it feels like a step down from what a Vietnamese-medium school expected. Moving into English A before reading and writing speed catches up tends to cost marks across every subject, not just English, since almost everything is assessed in timed written English.

Science and maths level choices should be made against the specific paper, not the subject label. AA rewards algebraic manipulation and proof; AI rewards modelling and comfortable use of technology — a student strong in one isn't automatically strong in the other. The same split applies to IGCSE's 0580 Extended paper versus 0606 Additional Mathematics, which point toward different next steps.

Once the subjects and levels are settled, tutoring works fastest when it starts from the school's own task sheets and mark schemes rather than a general subject overview — sessions built directly around your child's actual assessment criteria, in the language their teacher will use when marking, close gaps far quicker than broad revision ever does.

Bookings run on Indochina Time, not on ours. Our tutors work from India, roughly ninety minutes behind Vietnam, so a 7pm session in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City falls in the late afternoon on the tutor's side — a comfortable, normal working hour rather than a stretch. Most families settle on weekday evenings between about 6 and 9pm, plus weekend mornings, and every booking confirmation carries the full time and date so nobody has to convert time zones in their head.

The first lesson is diagnostic rather than instructional: the tutor asks what your child is actually being assessed on this term, works through a couple of problems while the student talks through their thinking, and finds where the reasoning breaks down rather than just where the final number is wrong. From there, 60-minute sessions suit routine maintenance and 90-minute sessions suit heavier IA or past-paper work, usually once or twice a week and stepping up before mocks or the May session.

Everything runs over video with a shared on-screen workspace — maths and science lessons use it for graphing and worked equations, essay subjects use a shared document with inline comments. Past papers and mark schemes get annotated live and saved somewhere your family can come back to. None of this needs specialised equipment: a laptop or tablet, a decent connection and a headset cover it; a phone will do in a pinch but isn't ideal for anything maths-heavy.

Send us your child's own school paperwork wherever you have it — MYP task-specific criteria, DP internal assessment guidelines with their word limits, IGCSE mark schemes — because tutors use the same language your child's teacher will use when marking. Where the compulsory Vietnamese-subject hours run alongside the international timetable, we plan sessions around that longer combined day rather than assuming a free afternoon exists.

A short message after each lesson tells you what was covered and what's next, with a fuller check-in every few weeks. You can ask for a call whenever you want one. Tutors go through a vetting step before they're matched with any student, lessons happen on the platform rather than through personal phone numbers, and a parent is always welcome to stay in the room, particularly for younger PYP or MYP students. The sensible way to start is a first lesson before agreeing to anything ongoing.