Pham Van Dong Secondary and High School

An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.

What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.

Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.

What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.

Hệ thống Giáo dục Alpha, in English Alpha Schools, is a Vietnamese school network belonging to the school block of the EQuest group. The model was presented on 21 April 2013 at the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, in May 2013 a secondary school opened, on 17 July 2018 the system took in the Pham Van Dong school and gained an upper secondary level, and after July 2019 it moved to the Geleximco district and opened a primary school. In November 2023 the Alpha and CGD schools were merged under a common name. The network gives the numbers of its sites differently and we give them all: the page about the system names three sites, Alpha SmartCity and Alpha CGD in Hanoi and Alpha Hai Phong; the page of the Hai Phong school speaks of four; a separate page about the system on the same site speaks of two in Hanoi and one in Vung Tau and of the Hai Phong one opening in the 2024/2025 academic year. The pupils differ as well: 1,400 pupils and 250 teachers on one page, 1,000 and 100 at the CGD school, some 2,000 and 300 on the Hai Phong site. On 25 July 2022 the network, together with the EQuest group and seven other of its institutions, received accreditation as units of the Cognia organisation. The chairman of the board of directors since August 2021 is given as Dam Quang Minh. The network reports no work outside Vietnam and draws no distinction between ownership, management and franchise.

What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.

EQuest Education Group is a Vietnamese education group which calls the organisations within it member institutions. The site gives no formal separation into ownership, management and franchise, but the milestones section describes purchases outright: Alpha School, Newton Grammar School, Victory Experimental School, Victory Sai Gon High School, St. Nicholas School Da Nang, Hanoi Star Education System, Happy School, American Polytechnic College, Saigon Polytechnic College, Phu Xuan University and Viet My Hanoi College have been acquired. The year of foundation is 2003, at first as the consulting company EQuest Academy; in November 2019 the holding company was renamed to its present name. There are three blocks: school education, colleges and universities, and educational technology. The numbers on the site differ and we give them all: the section about the group speaks of 25 institutions as of 2025, the home page shows 16 member brands, the school section speaks of 14 institutions with Cognia accreditation, and the description of the Vietnamese home page keeps the figure of 35 sites as of July 2020. Pupils and students: some 20,000 in the schools, 10,000 in the colleges and universities and more than 180,000 on digital programmes. The geography: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hai Phong, Hai Duong, Hue, Ba Ria-Vung Tau. The investors named are KKR, Vietnam Oman Investment and TAEL Partners: TAEL came in in October 2016, KKR in June 2021 and again in May 2023.

What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.