Sung-Sang Yoo (Seoul National University, Department of Education, Professor Seoul National University, Education Research Institute, Researcher)
This research explores how the Philippines and Vietnam have different systems of educational differentiation, which is closely related to educational inequality. This research adopts the comparative approach to explore educational differentiation in the Philippines and Vietnam. Based on the literature review, this research analyzes educational differentiation in three dimensions: vocation specific, special-purpose schools and standardization. The research results illustrate that Vietnamese education is highly differentiated compared to the one in the Philippines. Vietnamese education has a vocational track starting in lower secondary school, and have popular gifted high school system. In contrast, Filipino education rarely specifies vocational tracks at the secondary school level, and there is a limited number of science high schools. Both countries’ curricula are standardized by education ministries. Educational differentiation among developing countries can be different. This implies that the educational inequality in developing countries needs further examination in relation to the country’s educational differentiation, moving beyond the issue of access to education.