Financing Preprimary Education: How Vietnamese Provinces Allocate Scarce Resources

Abstract

This study is the first to examine how provinces allocate resources for preprimary education in Vietnam. We find that despite reliance on the central government’s Decision 46, provinces in Vietnam show considerable autonomy and exhibit substantial variation in how they allocate education aid to preprimary education. The variation comes to light in how they allocate funds between salary and non-salary purposes and how they fiscally treat different types of students, namely socio-economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and in different grade levels. This study paves the way for exploration of a multitude of unanswered research inquiries in preprimary education in Vietnam.