The whole country is still short of more than 3.9 million textbooks
Before the opening day of the 2026-2027 school year, in some localities, there was a situation of parents queuing in long lines, waiting to buy textbooks for their children.
The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) said that as of 6 pm on September 14, localities are still short of 3,916,370 textbooks, including volumes 1 and 2, equivalent to about 1.5% of total demand. This is not a small number.
On the side of Vietnam Education Publishing House (NXBGDVN), on September 17, representatives of the unit said that by July 20, 99% of the planned output had been printed, out of a total of 204.47 million copies serving more than 18.77 million students; 85.15% of the output had been distributed to localities according to registered needs, and 13.3 million backup copies had been printed.
However, the total demand arising in the 2026 - 2027 school year is 69,872,905 copies, an increase of 39.7% compared to the initial forecast and exceeding the maximum reserve level by 30%.
Ordering close to the opening ceremony puts pressure on textbook supply
According to the annual process, schools receive requests to buy books from parents, report to the Department of Education and Training and localities. Departments and localities will notify the Ministry of Education and Training and NXBGDVN of local book demand. Based on data from localities, NXBGDVN will forecast demand and organize bidding and printing.
NXBGDVN said that in the 2026-2027 school year, orders registered before July 30th have been fully met 100%. In addition to the official quantity, the system also prepared a reserve level of about 30%.
However, on July 30, the locality continued to generate seven orders; the total additional demand at one point increased by nearly 40% compared to the initial amount. Not only statistical work but also forecasting and updating demand in the locality is not close to reality.
The gap between forecasts and reality has made the publishing unit unable to react in time, especially when demand suddenly increased close to the opening ceremony" - NXBGDVN assessed.
As of September 12, all 10 localities expected to implement the free textbook policy in the 2026-2027 school year have not yet implemented it. This is a group of localities with many hot spots in book supply.
Many provinces and cities planned to exempt textbooks for students, but until close to the opening ceremony, many localities announced that they would only exempt some groups of subjects, for general students, textbook exemption will be implemented from the 2027-2028 school year.
This is one of the reasons why the survey of textbook demand in localities planned for free is not close to reality, reporting to the Ministry of Education and Training as well as notifying the Ministry of Education and Training about the amount of textbooks needed for the 2025-2026 school year is lower than the actual demand.
According to a representative of NXBGDVN, Article 33 of Decree No. 271/2026/ND-CP stipulating the exemption of general education textbooks and tuition fee exemption, curriculum for National Defense and Security Education subjects at higher education and vocational education institutions requires the Provincial People's Committee to approve the annual textbook demand forecast plan before October 30 to serve as a basis for making estimates; and at the same time ensure that books are stored in libraries of educational institutions no later than June 15.
This Decree was issued on July 3, 2026, which means that if the locality does not proactively plan in advance, the implementation of the policy of free textbooks cannot be implemented this school year. However, communication to parents has not been timely, leading to a situation where parents do not order books early but wait for free textbooks.
With a few localities still determined to deploy free textbooks for some priority groups, until the time near the new school year, localities will release the number of textbooks ordered to be put into libraries.
This number of new book orders is equated with a shortage of textbooks while hundreds of thousands of book titles cannot appear to immediately meet the requirements at the last minute" - NXBGDVN explained.
On the other hand, according to the 2018 General Education Program, general schools will self-choose elective subjects to teach at educational institutions. Thus, if schools have not decided on elective subjects and notified the demand for textbooks for this subject to order the corresponding amount of textbooks, no printing and distribution unit can proactively predict the demand for this group of textbooks.
NXBGDVN believes that the textbook shortage incident for the 2026-2027 school year is an experience for localities to implement the policy of free textbooks in the upcoming school years more conveniently and effectively. This is also a major lesson in collecting and reporting information on the book demand of each locality, in order to ensure that the number of printed textbooks meets the demand.
The coordination mechanism between localities - NXBGDVN - Ministry of Education and Training needs to be legalized, clearly defining the tasks, powers and responsibilities of each party, avoiding overlap and passivity in the work of printing and supplying textbooks.
