The internationalization of teacher training and the demand for the reform of secondary education in Vietnam after 2018 require teacher training to shift from content-based approach to competency-based approach. Pedagogical instituitions should give more importance to competence-based knowledge rather than focusing too much on theory part. In order to meet these requirements, there has been a need to study about professional competency and training pre-service teachers in the orientation of professional competency standards. This article presents the authors’ conception of competence, professional competence, teachers’ professional standards, and competency assessment of pedagogical students. Specifically, the authors propose a competency framework for teachers through a benchmark of 30 standards and 76 criteria as the basis for pre-service teachers’ competency assessment.