Quoc Hoc School was where Nguyen Tat Thanh (President Ho Chi Minh) attended in the period of 1908 - 1909.

Quoc Hoc School was established under the direction of King Thanh Thai on October 23, 1896 and the Decree of the Indochinese Governor General Palace on November 18, 1896. During the time when Nguyen Tat Thanh attended, the school was just a row of cottages that were renovated from Royal Marine Barracks. The school gate had an ancient architecture with two floors. The upper floor was made from wood with the roof tiled in Chinese style and a large bell to chime the class time. In front of the gate hung a signboard red lacquered trimmed with gold written in Chinese characters “Phap Tu Quoc Hoc Truong Mon”. On the right hand side was a folding screen of “the dragon horse” built in the 8th year of Thai Thanh (1896), which is still preserved to this day.

In 1908, Nguyen Tat Thanh was one of the ten best students of the French-Vietnamese Dong Ba Primary School who passed the excess level exam to enter the senior secondary education system of Quoc Hoc School.

Although he had only one year studying at Quoc Hoc School, it was a very important year that created a significant turning point on the way to forming his ideology of saving the country and the people, because it was the year he began to enter adulthood. His steadfast and mature thoughts urged himself to quickly find a right direction for the nation. At the same time, Mr. Nguyen Sinh Sac was sent to work as a Co-Chief of Binh Khe District (a mountainous district of Binh Dinh province), in May 1909, he went to Binh Dinh to mark the exam, then in July 1909, when Sac took the office, Nguyen Tat Thanh also dropped out of school, left Hue and went to the South to find a way abroad.

Recreating the years when President Ho Chi Minh studied at the school, the museum has built an iconic space complex of a classroom at Quoc Hoc School with blackboards, tables and chairs, books, and school timetables of Quoc Hoc students. In particular, using the display art to place behind a transparent blackboard with the words Liberty - Equality - Charity are images and documents about the suffering of the Vietnamese people to emphasize the contrast between the fictitious civilization theory that was preached the French colonialists in order to demean the people and the tragedy of extreme exploitation that the people were suffering. That display solution aims to emphasize the significance of his period at Quoc Hoc School that had an important influence in the formation and development of his thought of saving the country and the people.

With historical significance and long tradition, on March 26, 1990, Quoc Hoc School was recognized by the Ministry of Culture and Information (now the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) as a National historical and cultural relic under the Decision No. 298/VH-QD; and on December 31, 2020, classified as a special national monument by the Prime Minister.

♦ ♦ ♦