The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training (GDĐT) is seeking opinions from relevant units on a plan to implement the policy of free textbooks throughout the area.
According to the proposed plan, all students from grades 1 to 12 at public and non-public educational institutions in Ho Chi Minh City will be able to borrow textbooks for use during the school year.
The policy also applies to students studying continuing education programs at the secondary and high school levels and literacy programs.
The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training also proposed to exempt the National Defense and Security Education curriculum from the 2027-2028 school year.
According to the plan, the exemption of textbooks is implemented according to the borrow-return mechanism, schools are responsible for organizing for students to borrow textbooks at the library at the beginning of the school year or the beginning of each semester. The handover must be completed no later than 15 days before the opening day.
Students must return all borrowed books within a maximum of 15 working days from the end of the school year. In case of transfer or dropout, students must also return books at the time of completing the procedures.
For lost or damaged books that cannot be continued due to subjective errors, students or legal guardians must compensate the school. The preferred form is compensation with new textbooks of the same type, in the correct list.
If there are no replacement books, the cash refund is calculated according to the usage time. Specifically, books used for less than 1 year are refunded 80% of their value; from 1 year to less than 3 years is 50%; from 3 to 5 years is 20%. Books used for more than 5 years are not refunded in cash.
If the above plan is approved, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training will take the lead in coordinating the circulation of textbooks between school libraries at the same level in the area through an inter-agency mechanism, in order to optimize the efficiency of using public assets before approving the new procurement plan. The state budget will allocate additional procurement funds annually in the recurrent expenditure estimate to promptly replace the number of damaged textbooks due to natural wear during use. At the same time, allow contingency procurement with a quantity not exceeding 10% of the total actual demand.
Previously, Ho Chi Minh City planned to exempt textbooks for 1st, 6th and 10th grade students from the 2026-2027 school year, then expand according to the roadmap to cover all grades in 2029.
After the merger, Ho Chi Minh City currently has more than 2.5 million students.
