Educational policy in Viet Nam has closely followed the revolutionary movement. In the essentially democratic period from 1945 to 1960, Viet Nam created a nationwide 10-grade school system and fought illiteracy on a large scale. By 1960, as socialism began to predominate, especially in the North, traditional educational methods and values began to give way before the new principle of combining productive work with teaching. In 1976 the Communist Party Congress provided the nation with a work-study plan based on the experience of pilot schools such as Hoa Binh, in which young veterans of the battle for liberation were brought together as early as 1958 to do productive work, learn at the middle and secondary levels, create a self-supporting economic enterprise, and become the new socialist workers of the immediate future. Other work-study schools have since been established in both urban and rural areas, often with difficulty and sometimes in affiliation with existing industry instead of autonomously. Currently, work-study students receive a generalized education, political instruction, and specific work experience in areas such as agriculture, fisheries, textile work, management techniques, road work, and building construction. (SB)