The Minister of Education and Training (MOET) has just issued Circular No. 10/2026/TT-BGDDT promulgating the Regulation on diplomas and certificates (VBCC) of the national education system, effective from April 15, 2026.
The Circular is issued to replace Circular No. 21/2019/TT-BGDĐT dated November 29, 2019 of the Minister of Education and Training promulgating the Regulation on management of secondary school diplomas, high school diplomas, pedagogical intermediate diplomas, pedagogical college diplomas, higher education diplomas and certificates of the national education system and some other documents.
Replacing all previous regulations on VBCC
Regulations detailing new contents on VBCC management are mentioned in the Law on Education amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Education, the Law on Higher Education (amended) and the Law on Vocational Education (amended).
Accordingly, the new contents include: Replacing the issuance of secondary school diplomas with confirmation of completion of the secondary school program in the report card; assigning principals to issue high school diplomas; supplementing vocational secondary school diplomas; supplementing digital diplomas and digital certificates; and expanding the scope of regulation to include VBCC of vocational education.
The Circular also replaces all regulations on VBCC that were previously scattered in many documents of the Ministry of Education and Training and the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, creating favorable conditions for educational institutions, management staff and learners in research and implementation.
Shortening the deadline for issuing high school diplomas
Regulations supplementing the concept of digital VBCC; regulations on issuance, storage, processing; issuance of copies, editing, recall, and cancellation of digital VBCC; regulations on building, updating, and exploiting databases (CSDL) of VBCC and a list of mandatory information schools for updating. The Ministry of Education and Training builds a national common VBCC database to serve the issuance of digital VBCC, storage of issued data, and disclosure of information on VBCC issuance.
Information updates and disclosure are also applied to VBCCs issued before the Circular takes effect. Information extracted from the database has legal value as information in the original book; information for lookup from the database or on the VNeID application is used instead of copies from the original book and has verification value for VBCCs.
The regulations also require full data updates when issuing, re-issuing, editing, recalling, and canceling VBCC, ensuring the principle of "correct, sufficient, clean, live, unified, shared, shared". The entire Regulation is built in the direction of promoting the application of technology, deploying digital VBCC synchronously with paper VBCC.
The deadline for issuing high school diplomas (paper) is shortened from 75 days to 30 days; the deadline for issuing digital certificates is 5 days from the date of the graduation recognition decision. Related procedures are regulated in the direction of reducing paperwork, increasing exploitation and sharing of data from related databases; prioritizing resolution in the electronic environment; not requiring people to provide information already available on state agency data systems.
Abolish the regulation that the Ministry of Education and Training prints VBCC blanks
Regulations institutionalizing the policy in Resolution No. 71-NQ/TW of the Politburo on strengthening autonomy and self-responsibility of educational institutions associated with effective inspection and supervision.
Regulations clearly define the authority and responsibility of each related organization and individual. In which, the Ministry of Education and Training focuses on issuing regulations, implementing state management according to law, not replacing localities and grassroots levels. Removing the regulation that the Ministry of Education and Training prints VBCC blanks, decentralizes to the Department of Education and Training or competent agencies to issue VBCC (for paper VBCC). Not stipulating the model of university degrees, vocational education and certificates (only stipulating the main content recorded on diplomas and certificates), except for the high school graduation diploma model to ensure national unity. At the same time, not stipulating the model of original books, appendices to original books, books for issuing copies... but only stipulating the main content, in order to increase autonomy for competent agencies to issue VBCC.
Supplementing regulations assigning deputy heads to sign VBCCs
Regulations supplement and adjust regulations based on summarizing difficulties and inadequacies in practice, ensuring rationality, feasibility and prioritizing ensuring the rights of learners. Supplement regulations assigning deputy heads to sign VBCC; assigning the right to sign copies of VBCC to reduce the burden on heads; stipulating special cases when issuing copies from original books, re-issuing, editing content, recovering, and canceling VBCC in situations such as no original books, no competent persons, or when competent agencies merge, split, or dissolve.
For outstanding issues related to secondary school diplomas, assign the Department of Education and Training to handle; The commune-level People's Committee is responsible for handing over the original diploma book and related documents to the Department of Education and Training before May 31, 2026.
