Quite a few Vietnamese parents don’t blink at paying several thousand dollars for their children’s summer trips abroad. They consider such trips as good preparation for overseas study later on.

A four-week summer course in new York costs $5000

Overseas study consultancy firms in Hanoi are quoting fees of between $4000 and $6000 for a three or four week summer course in the US, UK or Australia, while it costs $2900 to go to Singapore.

The trips are a ‘luxury’ in Vietnam, where per capita income just exceeded the thousand dollar threshold in 2008. The thought of paying several thousand dollars for one month of training makes middle-class income earners think hard before deciding to send their children to overseas short term courses

The number of children registering this year to go to the US at one firm, Sunrise, was not big enough to organize a trip. Meanwhile, registrations to go the UK and Singapore decreased by 30 percent in comparison with last summer.

EF Company’s branch in Hanoi has decided to cancel its tour to Canada, and reports a slight decrease in the number of registrations to other countries.

Only GET/Language Link, a firm that specializes on the Singaporean market, still can see the same number of registrations for Singapore trips as in previous years. The firm also began organizing trips to Australia and UK this year but has been able to orgainze only one group to each of the two countries with 15-20 children each.

A consultant at an international education organization said that he knows that a lot of parents who regularly sent their children abroad in previous summers, have canceled their tours this year. Some of them said that they want to save up money for their childrens’ university study abroad later on.

Chi Tra, who has sent her fifteen year-old son to a training course in the US, said that she and her husband had to think a long time before spending 100 million dong on the boy’s trip.

“Every day of his trip costs us three million dong (about $170), which is equal to my monthly salary. However, we still have to spend money to firm up the future of my children,” Tra said.

Some parents say it’s the experience that counts

Tran Dong Phuong of Hanoi said that his son has been studying at Apollo English Centre for six years, therefore, his English is quite good. However, he still wants to send his son to a 4-week training course in Singapore so that he can get more adapted to people and know how to behave.

Meanwhile, Tra considers the 4-week training course in the US of the 15-year-old son as the opportunity for him to practice living independently. Tra does not think that learning English is the top priority of the trip.

“He has had an easy life living with parents, who attend to his every desire. We now want him to become more independent,” Tra said. “He has just contacted us after 10 days of his trip and said he has much grown up”.

Pham Bao Chau, who is now a student in Taiwan, related that several years ago, she attended a 2-week training course in Singapore. The only thing she remembered, Chau said, is that she had a very happy and relaxed time. She had a lot of time to visit sites in Singapore and meet Singaporean students. She only learned a little English every day, just familiar grammar exercises she had learned before in Vietnam.

Though they spending large sums to send children abroad to English training courses, few parents expect to see their children’s English skills to have made great progress after the trip. They well understand that it takes time to learn foreign languages and that one should not expect mastery to come just after four weeks

In fact, a lot of parents consider the summer trips as a sort of reward for their children when they finish the school year. That explains why all overseas study consultancy firms tend to design training courses which do not force children to learn much. The children have much time to visit universities and schools, see beautiful landscapes and meet local students

A costly step toward long-term study abroad

Summer training courses are considered by many parents as a step to help their children get used to studying in a foreign environment.

Luong Thi Huong of Sunrise Company said that for many parents, the main goal of the summer trips is to deepen their child’s understanding of life in foreign countries and familiarity with a foreign education system before they commit to long term overseas study. She estimated that some 60 percent of children who go to study at universities abroad are veterans of summer trips when they were still in secondary school.

Bui Thi Thuy Dung of EF Company has observed that if a child obtains a visa for a short summer course, it is likely to be easier to get visas for long term overseas studies later on.

Tra, whose the son is now attending a training course in the US, believes that the short trip will help her son understand more about the life of students and help him decide whether to go studying abroad at university level later.

Pham Dan Hanh is a 12th grade student of the specialized Foreign Language High School run by Hanoi National University. She has announced, on her return from a summer trip to Germany, that she will go to Germany for university study. “One month in Germany was enough to help me understand basic things like how to travel about and go shopping. This has helped me become more self-confident about an overseas study course later,” she said.

Lan Huong