9 universities to use Vietnam’s English certificate amid IELTS test postponement

Tran Nam, head of the Department of Communication and Business Relations from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, HCMC, said this will create favorable conditions for students in the context that the IELTS test has been indefinitely postponed in Vietnam.

Earlier, only the University of Foreign Languages under the Vietnam National University Hanoi used the VSTEP certificate for admission.

VSTEP (Vietnamese Standardized Test of English Proficiency) is the first standardized English proficiency test in Vietnam.

Organized by the Ministry of Education and Training since 2014, the nearly-three-hour test comprises of four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Last week, the British Council and the IDP, the only two authorized entities to organize IELTS test in Vietnam, announced to postpone the exam until further notice.

The indefinite postponement was caused by the organizations failing to acquire their approval documents, the education ministry said, adding that the exams were not being managed properly.

The postponement has caused a lot of trouble for students who’d begun filing their admission documents to study abroad.

Certain Vietnamese universities also use the IELTS scores as an admission criterion and as a graduation benchmark, so students planning to study at home were also upset.