Photo: Graduation ceremony of Sedbergh Vietnam HCMC, a member of CIS
I strongly urge leaders of private schools to completely stop congratulating and boasting about their students getting into public magnet schools. This practice only harms young minds and negatively impacts private institutions themselves.
We are inadvertently feeding into a deeply flawed prejudice that public magnet schools are superior to private ones. Gaining admission to a public magnet school cannot be the yardstick to evaluate a young person, and it is certainly not the benchmark for nurturing human capital in this era. The quality of a private school should not be measured by how many students it sends to public magnet schools, but rather by its ability to foster well-rounded individuals who achieve long-term success.
The more private schools do this, the more students they will lose next year. There is absolutely no need to demean yourselves by glorifying admission to public magnet schools. Getting in should be taken for granted, because high-quality private school students are already highly capable and well-rounded.
Private schools offer distinct and superior values compared to magnet schools. In developed nations—especially the US, Switzerland, the UK, and even China—having a child attend a private K-12 school is a source of immense family pride. It reflects social status, financial capacity, an educational vision, and serves as an indicator that the child is receiving a holistic education while living and learning within a network of successful families. Perhaps Vietnam is the only place where people brag about a student transferring from a private school to a public magnet school (without it even being for advanced STEM studies).
Proving Our Own Worth
- The Newton School System in Hanoi has sent students to Princeton, Peking University, and Tsinghua University; boasts International Olympiad gold medalists; produced this year’s top valedictorian in the high school graduation exam; and consistently has students competing at the city, national, and international merit levels every year.
- Hanoi Star School has an acceptance rate of under 10% and claims countless national and international awards.
- Einstein School HCMC consistently sees its students receive ASEAN scholarships.
- Sedbergh Vietnam in HCMC offers a top-tier Cambridge curriculum, produces outstanding athletes and academic gold medalists, and even secured a first-place national prize in Economics this year.
- The St. Nicholas School (Da Nang) boasts students who play in orchestral symphonies, run marathons, win special awards at the World Scholar’s Cup, and gain admission to major universities in the UK and US.
- Alpha School has 65% of its 12th graders scoring above 6.5 in IELTS, alongside members on the national basketball and golf teams.
- The Canadian International School (CIS) has students winning the most prestigious scholarships from the University of Toronto, and entering the Ivy League in the US and the University of London in the UK.
- Nguyen Sieu School achieves higher IGCSE scores than all magnet and international schools in Hanoi.
- Luong The Vinh High School, founded by the late Professor Van Nhu Cuong, enjoys immense prestige.
- Doan Thi Diem School, led by People’s Teacher Ms. Hien, has always been a shining beacon of Hanoi’s education.
With such stellar achievements, why should private schools meekly glorify magnet schools? Why lower yourselves like that? Why cling to an outdated standard of success from decades ago?
Outdated Models in the 21st Century
What is the point of specializing in English, Chinese, History, Geography, or Civics? For English and Chinese majors, IELTS is still just IELTS and HSK is still just HSK—no different from the scores of any graduating student from Sedbergh or Nguyen Sieu who takes the IGCSE or HSK exams. What is the point of specializing in History or Geography when AI and Google can provide that knowledge in less than a second?
The majority of public magnet schools lack excellent sports programs, comprehensive school psychology systems, or robust English and STEM curricula. Their students still have to pay extra for outside tutoring to prepare for the SAT, IELTS, TOEFL, and extracurricular profiles. So why do private schools blindly take pride in their students entering such institutions?
Private schools are self-sabotaging and suffocating their own growth by glorifying the “magnet” model, effectively turning themselves into feeder schools for public magnet institutions. By boasting about these admissions, progressive private schools are rendering themselves a secondary choice in the eyes of parents.
There is no need to celebrate private school students entering magnet schools just to convince parents to enroll their children in middle school. This may bring a one-year short-term marketing benefit, but in the long run, it erodes the brand value of high-quality private schools.
Concurrently, it robs excellent students from well-off families of life-changing opportunities. Blinded by the vanity of the “magnet school” title, they leave private schools and miss out on long-term assets: a high-quality network of peers and parents, elite sports, top-tier nutrition, advanced languages, STEM, school counseling, robust extracurricular activities, and direct pathways to the world’s top universities.
It is utterly absurd and irrational to transfer a child who is perfectly happy, well-rested, well-nourished, physically active, and academically excellent into an environment where they become sleep-deprived from late nights and early mornings, receive poorer daily nutrition, and face toxic stress from competing in cramped classrooms—all just to narrow-mindedly obsess over a single subject and pay extra for test-prep centers to get into college. All of this, simply because the child passed an entrance exam they were bound to ace anyway, because they were already excellent to begin with.
The 21st century is the era of AI, high technology, big data, creativity, mental health, leadership, and global citizenship. Why, then, do we continue to obsess over and idolize an educational model designed decades ago to train students who are good at only one single subject?
(PS: I am strictly referring to private schools boasting about their students getting into public magnet schools)
