Vol.:(0123456789) International Review of Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-020-09850-1 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER Introducing a tool to gauge curriculum quality under Sustainable Development Goal 4: The case of primary schools in Vietnam Anh‑Duc Hoang 1  · Hiep‑Hung Pham 2,3  · Yen‑Chi Nguyen 1  · Le‑Kim‑Ngan Nguyen 1  · Quan‑Hoang Vuong 4,5  · Minh Q. Dam 2  · Trung Tran 6  · Tien‑Trung Nguyen 7,8 © UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract The purposes of the study presented in this article were twofold. One was to respond to the question: what makes a quality curriculum? within the framework of the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4). The other was to develop and pilot an appropriate instrument to evaluate the quality of curricula in a sample of private schools in Vietnam. While public schools are still preparing for implementation of Vietnam’s New General Educational Curriculum, small adjust- ments are already being made to the curriculum in some private and international schools in Vietnam, which have been issued a curriculum customisation licence. Therefore, the pilot schools which participated in this study can serve as case studies for the upcoming major policy improvement in Vietnam’s public schools, thus pro- viding guidance for Vietnamese policymakers, school principals and teachers. While there is no “one-size-fts-all” curriculum assessment formula, since each country exhibits distinctive features in its teaching and learning programme, the indicators developed by the authors for their study can be adjusted to suit the needs of other countries. Keywords Curriculum evaluation · Sustainable Development Goal 4 · Kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) education · Education in Vietnam Résumé Introduction d’un outil pour mesurer la qualité d’un curriculum à l’aune du qua- trième Objectif de développement durable: le cas des écoles primaires au Viêt Nam – L’étude présentée dans cet article avait deux objectifs. Le premier était de se deman- der, à l’aune du quatrième Objectif de développement durable (ODD 4), ce qui fait qu’un curriculum est de bonne qualité. Le second consistait à développer et tester un * Anh-Duc Hoang duc@edlabasia.org Extended author information available on the last page of the article