Over the past two decades, Vietnam’s education system has undergone far-reaching reforms in response to the demands of socio-economic development and international integration. This article examines education reform in Vietnam during the period 2000-2025 from a public policy perspective, with particular attention to the relationship between public investment in education, policy implementation conditions, and students’ learning outcomes. The study draws on secondary data from authoritative sources, including the OECD, the World Bank, UNESCO, and Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training, and employs a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative analysis with national-level regression analysis. The findings indicate that public expenditure on education is positively associated with Vietnamese students’ average PISA scores, while large class sizes and teacher shortages are negatively associated with learning outcomes. In contrast, public spending on higher education does not exhibit a clear relationship with learning outcomes at the primary and secondary levels, reflecting the differentiated structure of the education system. These results suggest that education reform outcomes depend not only on the scale of financial investment, but also on teaching and learning conditions and the quality of the teaching workforce.