This article discusses factors affecting youth's critical thinking competency, using a dataset of 1182 observations from 30 secondary schools in rural and urban areas of Vietnam. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was constructed to analyse the overall impact of sociodemographic, within-school and out-of-school factors on critical thinking capacity of students. The results reveal that effects from school education appear to outweigh out-of-school elements and demographic features of students. Insights from these findings are expected to contribute to skills-based education and policy planning in educational contexts similar to Vietnam. Further studies could be conducted to complement and extend results from this study by examining different subject groups by age, ethnicity, and other stakeholders, such as parents, teachers, school managers and authorized representatives.