In June 2023 EMASI Schools won the Great Education Award from the British Chamber of Commerce Vietnam. I drafted the submission with Duke Phung, the school's art teacher, and the Nguyen Art Foundation, the school's art partner. This is a short account of what the submission argued and why it worked.

What we put forward

The award asks a school to show what it does that others do not. We did not lead with results or facilities. We led with the mission: an education delivered in Vietnamese and English that emphasises Vietnamese values, academic and personal excellence, and global understanding. The point of the school is not to replace a Vietnamese education with an international one, but to produce Vietnamese citizens who keep their culture and can succeed anywhere.

The evidence for that was the arts programme. The A in EMASI is not decoration. From kindergarten to Grade 12 students study art, music, drama and performance under the Cambridge framework, alongside contemporary Vietnamese art in the school's own galleries, with exhibitions that change through the year. Students take part in exhibitions and workshops on difficult themes, including war and displacement, in partnership with the Nguyen Art Foundation and Arabesque Vietnam. Student work has been published and exhibited outside the school.

Behind that sits a bilingual curriculum that merges Cambridge with the Vietnamese national curriculum, and builds on the strength Vietnamese education already has in mathematics and science rather than discarding it.

Why it worked

2023 marked fifty years of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United Kingdom. The judges, drawn from the British Consulate and the Chamber, were looking for something that embodied that relationship. A school that keeps its Vietnamese identity and adds a British education to it was a direct answer, and the arts programme gave the argument concrete form.

The lesson for anyone preparing a submission of this kind is simple: state the mission plainly, then show the one thing in the school that proves it.