The Dewey Schools

A bilingual Vietnamese-American school system named after John Dewey, with multiple campuses across Hanoi and Hai Phong. CIS member and authorised IB World School for the Diploma and MYP programmes.

Vu Thi Hien leads the system. The senior pathway is a dual diploma combining a US high school diploma with the IB Diploma, taught in English and Vietnamese, and the Tay Ho Tay campus was commended by the Hanoi Department of Education and Training in 2025 for its integrated bilingual programme. Pedagogy leans on project-based, inquiry and design-thinking methods drawn from Dewey's experiential tradition.

Tuition has historically run between roughly 170 and 235 million VND a year depending on grade and campus, with annual rises set in the 5 to 10 percent band. Natural family is Vietnamese, drawn to genuine bilingual delivery and the IB route, rather than the international expat circuit. The system is sizeable and growing, so the cleanest move is to visit the specific campus you would attend rather than treat the network as one school.

• Reddit teacher and ex-staff commentary on Dewey is uniformly bleak, and the rebrand history makes it the most common point of caution.
• One ex-staffer said "Dewey is probably the worst school in Hanoi, and is terrible in pretty much every aspect except paying on time," citing constantly changing workloads, arbitrary curriculum changes and contract problems on departure.
• Another comment confirmed the school's history: a 2019 incident in which a student died on a school bus led to staff jail time, and the school rebranded to Dewey rather than face institutional consequences.
• Marketing-side reviews on the International Schools Database and on parent-facing sites are generally positive, focused on "Learning by Doing," English progression and modern facilities.
• The gap between staff-side accounts and parent-facing testimonials is the dominant signal, and parents weighing Dewey will find that gap by searching.