EMASI Nam Long / Van Phuc

EMASI is a Vietnamese bilingual school group, not a Western international school. Two campuses worth knowing: Nam Long in District 7, Van Phuc in Thu Duc (ex-Binh Thanh side). Both run the Vietnamese MOET curriculum alongside Cambridge English from K-12.

The student body is mostly Vietnamese. Expect your child to be in the minority if you're a foreign family. That's a genuine immersion environment, not a marketing line. Local families pick it because it's much cheaper than SSIS/BIS/ISHCMC while still offering a credible English stream and good buildings.

Facilities are genuinely strong, especially at Van Phuc which is the newer campus. Parents who like it talk about the campus, the swimming pool and library, and the all-round curriculum rather than academic results. According to one parent, "the results here are not just scores, but the knowledge my child learns about life skills, communication skills and problem solving." Read that as: don't come here expecting an IB pressure cooker.

The honest tension: doing two curricula well is hard. The school's own former managing director admits the Vietnamese system is "tradition and rigorous" while the Cambridge side wants creativity and critical thinking, and balancing the two takes constant adjustment. Some kids thrive. Some end up doing two half-curriculums. Worth asking specifically how the school sequences and lightens the MOET load.

Staff side is the watch-out. Teacher reviews sit at 2.5/5 with only around a quarter of staff recommending it as a place to work. That tracks with what people quietly say about most mid-tier Vietnamese-owned bilinguals here: turnover in foreign teaching staff is real. Ask at the visit how long the homeroom and English leads have been in post.

Van Phuc grew fast (enrollment more than doubled 2020-2024 under the previous MD, who has since left). Growing schools can be exciting or stretched - usually both. Nam Long is the older, more settled campus.

Net for a foreign family: EMASI is a sensible choice if you want your child genuinely embedded with Vietnamese peers, you're price-sensitive versus the top tier, and you're comfortable being hands-on about the bilingual balance. If you want a pure international peer group and pure international curriculum, look elsewhere in District 7.