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RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 VIENTIANE 000246 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PGOV SCUL SOCI LA
 
SUBJECT:  Education in Laos, Part I: The Primary Years 
 
 
VIENTIANE 00000246  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
¶1.  Summary.  This cable is the first in a series examining the 
education system in Laos, from elementary through university and 
technical/vocational schools.  Future cables will examine the 
problems faced by secondary schools, the limits of tertiary 
education, and the growing role of private schools.  Primary 
education in Laos faces huge challenges stemming from the basic 
demographics of the country coupled by economic challenges and poor 
incentives for teachers.  The Government of Laos (GOL) knows it 
needs to strengthen the system in order to provide the kind of 
educated worker required to pull the country out of poverty, but 
does not have the resources to overcome the challenges it has 
identified.  To do so successfully, however, would take a huge 
social mobilization and expenditure of resources far beyond anything 
currently being done in Laos today.  We do not expect to see an 
Asian tiger in these jungles anytime soon.  End Summary. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
Demographic Building Blocks: The Numbers 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  The youth and diversity of the Lao population help explain both 
the current state of education and the need for serious reform. 
According to the 2005 census, of the roughly 6 million people in 
Laos, 44% are younger than 15, creating huge and growing pressure on 
the current capacity of the school system.  In addition, the 
diversity of the Lao population creates a challenge for education 
officials from the earliest years: many young students do not speak 
the Lao language, and live in remote areas.  Officially, Laos has 49 
ethnic groups, which are often grouped into four language families. 
According to World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) figures, 
the Lao-Tai group of lowland communities together account for 66% of 
the population.  (The "Lao" themselves are 30% of the total 
population, with the 7 lowland Tai groups adding up to another 36%.) 
 The other ethnic groups are splintered into comparatively small 
numbers: 32 different Austro-Asiatic groups form 23% of the total 
population, the two Hmong-Yu Mien groups together are 7%, and 
finally 7 Sino-Tibetan groups make up 3% of the population. 
 
¶3.  Laos is only 27% urbanized, and, outside the main cities, the 
10,000 villages across 141 districts average only 500 people. 
Access to basic services varies widely; outside the main urban 
areas, about 30% of villages are off the road network and only 
one-third of rural villages have electricity.  Per capita GDP is 
roughly $600 per year, with the urban populations currently 
experiencing a much faster growth in prosperity and economic 
opportunity than their rural counterparts.  Roughly 80% of the labor 
force is involved in subsistence agriculture. Finding teachers for 
this wide range of communities has been a huge challenge for the 
government.  Add the problem of levels of childhood malnutrition 
that can be as high as 50% in the rural areas and the stage is set 
for an extremely difficult set of primary school years. 
 
¶4. The GOL is heavily dependent on the largesse of the international 
community to achieve educational goals. According to a 2007 draft 
UNESCO document, the GOL spends 15% of its budget on education, and 
approximately 40% of the total education expenditures were focused 
at the primary level. Official Development Assistance accounts for 
57% of the GOL's education budget and 92% of its capital budget, 
according to 2007 review of expenditures by the World Bank, 
International Monetary Fund, ADB, and European Commission.  In the 
2004/2005 school year, for example, bilateral donors contributed 
$37.15 million while multilateral donors added another $15.61 
million, with NGOs spending $1.81 million on education.  The main 
bilateral donors for the entire sector are Australia, Belgium, 
China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Sweden and the United States. 
Australia and France focus on primary education and teacher 
development.  Belgium and Germany work in technical and vocational 
training. Japan, Korea and Sweden work across all levels. 
 
¶5. Multilateral donors include the World Bank, ADB, UN agencies, and 
the European Union.  The majority of aid seems to be directed to the 
primary and tertiary levels, with less than 8% of the aid received 
for secondary or vocational schooling.  Many aid programs are also 
designed to improve central administration. The World Bank and ADB, 
with financial assistance from Australia and Sweden, are the largest 
donors to the primary education sector, with Japan as the single 
largest bilateral donor. 
 
¶6. Although U.S assistance for education is primarily focused on 
tertiary education, via the Fulbright programs, a number of other 
U.S. aid programs benefit primary schools.  A multi-year $3 million 
U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded program run by the Humpty 
Dumpty Institute provides school lunches, school rehabilitation, 
mine clearance, and administrative assistance for schools in 
Khammouan province.  The program, which benefits approximately 
10,000 students, recently received a second tranche of funding from 
USDA.  Catholic Relief Services has a $1,330,000 USAID-funded pilot 
program to train teachers in Vientiane municipality in working with 
disabled students.  With $321,376 of funding from PM/WRA, the NGO 
World Education/Consortium educates primary school students (and 
others) on the dangers of unexploded ordnance. 
 
 
VIENTIANE 00000246  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
--------------------------------------- 
THE PRIMARY YEARS - WHERE IT ALL BEGINS 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶7. In addition to dealing with a young, growing, as well as 
ethnically and linguistically diverse population, the Lao primary 
education system faces huge challenges in access to education and 
teacher training.  The standard length of primary school is 5 years, 
after which students may complete 3 years of lower secondary and an 
additional 3 years of upper secondary. (Note: the GOL plans to add a 
twelfth year of study into the system by 2010.)  Currently, there 
are approximately 8500 public primary schools in Laos serving about 
900,000 students, with enrollments increasing every year both in 
numbers and the percentage of the age-appropriate population. 
Education at the primary level is supposed to be both compulsory and 
free, according to a 1996 Prime Minister's decree, but some very 
poor families cannot afford the fees for uniforms and materials, 
keeping some children out of the school system.  Currently, over 57% 
of the adult population has not completed primary school.  According 
to a 2006 study by the World Food Program, labor commitments were 
the greatest driver of the high rates of primary school dropouts and 
poor attendance records.  Gender gaps also exist; a 2005 World Bank 
study indicates that while 92% of Lao-Tai girls in urban areas 
attend primary school, only 52% of non-Lao-Tai girls in rural areas 
participate. 
 
¶8.  Furthermore, while theoretically 80% of the villages have 
primary schools in their areas, only one-third of them offered the 
full 5 years of schooling.  Average class size is approximately 70 
students in rural areas, although the government says it intends to 
reduce that to a national average of 30-32 per class.  Overall, it 
takes on average 8 years to complete the 5 primary grades, according 
to a 2007 unpublished UNESCO report, and only about 58% of students 
who begin in Grade 1 will make it through Grade 5. 
 
¶9. Contacts in the Ministry of Education, up to and including both 
vice ministers, are apparently sincere in their efforts to 
strengthen the primary education sector, including creating 
additional opportunities and access for minority groups.  Most 
members of minority ethnic groups are in very remote areas, often 
off the road network, and sometimes in villages of 50-100 people. 
Building schools in all of these areas is simply beyond both the 
current resources of the Lao government and the current financial 
plans of the donor community.  Cultural traditions among many of 
these groups do not value education highly, particularly for girls, 
further contributing to poor attendance and completion rates.  The 
Ministry of Education is making an effort to identify teachers from 
within those ethnic groups to return to their communities, but the 
numbers are currently too small to effectively support that effort 
(see para 13).  Finally, since these groups do not speak Lao as 
their primary language, it will take more than buildings and 
textbooks to bring education to the people; the GOL will need to 
teach teachers new strategies for encouraging education in a 
multicultural and multilingual classroom. 
 
¶10. According to a UNESCO survey, 75% of poor households are ethnic 
minorities in remote communities, with higher rates of illiteracy 
and malnutrition and little access to health care.  In response to 
these needs, particularly in the northern highlands, the World Food 
Program established a school feeding program in 2002 that encourages 
families to send their kids to school, particularly girls.  Both 
girls and boys attending primary school in the 19 target districts 
not only get a midday meal, but are also given rations to take back 
to their families.  In order to encourage parents to send their 
daughters to school, the take-home rations - consisting of rice, 
fish and iodized salt - is larger for girls than it is for boys. 
Students who live far away from their schools and are, in effect, 
informal boarders, are also given extra rice and fish as an evening 
meal. This project aims to reach over 140,000 students by 2010. 
 
¶11. However, the government could also do much more with the 
resources it has.  The GOL's slowness in approving memoranda of 
understanding for foreign assistance projects is a major source of 
frustration for donors, and the Ministry of Education is among the 
worst offenders in this regard.  Approval for the USDA-funded school 
feeding/UXO clearance program, which required approval from the 
Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, took six 
months -- and that was considered unusually fast.  Approvals for 
other MOUs have taken well over a year. On the other hand, one 
senior contact in the International Relations Department at the 
Ministry, now in the U.S. on a Humphrey Fellowship, notes that she 
does not have enough staff to coordinate all of the foreign projects 
already in place, and that it is nearly impossible for the GOL to 
monitor all of the foreign activity in this sector.  The result, she 
says, is a wide array of uncoordinated and sometimes inefficient 
foreign-run programs resulting in textbook variations among schools, 
teachers learning different techniques, and other failures to 
achieve scaleable benefits. 
 
¶12. Requirements for becoming a teacher are quite low, leaving 
students to learn from teachers who may not have more than even the 
most basic education themselves.  Primary school teachers are 
 
VIENTIANE 00000246  003 OF 004 
 
 
selected from students who have completed lower secondary and are at 
least 15 years old.  They must also complete 3 years of Primary 
Training School, usually at one of the teacher training colleges. 
Alternatively, students who have completed upper secondary need only 
finish one additional year for teacher training in order to become 
primary school teachers.  Teachers are civil servants for the most 
part, and as such earn the standard government salary of between 
$25-30 per month when they first enter the profession.  However, in 
rural areas, just receiving the monthly wage may involve a trek of a 
few days to the provincial capital to get the cash, which may come 
several months late.  Most teachers in those areas do not have bank 
accounts, and, even if they do, may not have banks within easy 
travel distance to pick up or deposit funds.  Moreover, many need to 
have second jobs or work on farms in order to make ends meet.  In 
late 2007, the Government announced that it would make more of an 
effort to pay teacher salaries on time.  However, teachers may still 
lose several days of school time each month to travel to pick up 
their salaries.  Low salaries and lack of steady payment make 
attracting and retaining teachers in outlying provinces increasingly 
difficult, especially as the demand for educated labor in the urban 
areas continues to grow. 
 
¶13. Lao education officials, including Vice Dean of the National 
University's Faculty of Education Bounseng Kannhavong, note that 
they cannot train enough teachers, and even those who trained do not 
always stay in the school system.  Teachers who receive scholarships 
to university, contingent on an agreement to spend 3 years teaching 
in provincial schools, often find other jobs immediately after 
graduation.  Others may go out to the provinces but return to the 
cities after only a few months.  According to Vice Minister of 
Education Sengdeuane Lachanthaboun, the government tries to overcome 
cultural challenges by finding teachers from within the target 
ethnic group, training them at teacher training colleges, and 
sending them back to their district.  At the primary level, she 
notes, having a teacher of the same ethnic group is often critical 
to convincing parents to send their children to school, particularly 
for the girls.  Many ethnic groups, outside of the lowland Lao, do 
not value girls' education highly.  However, the GOL has not been 
able to find and train sufficient numbers of teachers - of any 
ethnicity - to staff fully the primary schools in those areas. 
 
--------------------------------------------- 
THE FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHTER...AT LEAST ON PAPER 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶14.  As part of the GOL's Millenium Development Goals, the Ministry 
of Education plans to have all of the appropriate age attend school 
by 2015, in other words, to comply with the 1996 compulsory 
education decree.  Girls are to have equal access to education by 
the same target year.  Literacy rates are supposed to top 85% by 
that time.  Plans for improved supervision, better materials, 
supplies in every classroom, and improved teacher training are 
regularly aired in the media and at education conferences in Laos. 
In fact, programs sponsored by the World Bank and the Asia 
Development Bank will finance the printing of new primary school 
textbooks and continue to build new schools in underserved areas. 
Universal primary education is a focus for many international 
donors.  Japan is currently the largest donor in the sector, having 
built 31 new schools since 1995. 
 
¶15. In addition, the GOL has the stated intention of introducing 
both English and French into all primary schools by 2010.  The 
Director General of the Education Ministry's Teacher Training 
Department, Professor Mithong Souvanvixay, told the newspaper 
Vientiane Times that the department would need to start enforcing 
scholarship requirements that students teach after graduation in 
order to fill the growing need for primary school teachers 
everywhere and ensuring that teachers who do not teach in the 
provinces repay their tuition costs. 
 
¶16. Comment.  Given that the Ministry of Education cannot find 
enough qualified teachers as it is, Post finds it difficult to 
believe that teachers qualified in both primary school education and 
English will be in the classrooms in any but the wealthiest urban 
districts by the 2010 target year.  Similarly, the call for books 
and school supplies in every classroom present a huge challenge in a 
country with no copyright law to protect textbook drafters and few 
updated textbooks in the Lao language (since without such a law 
there is little incentive to write books of any kind in the Lao 
language).  Donors can assist, but books in English, Thai, French, 
and other foreign languages are probably not going to help enough to 
reduce significantly the gaps at the primary school levels. 
 
¶17. The low levels of education for teachers themselves will also be 
difficult to overcome. Teachers are often selected from the 
mid-ranks of school leavers - not highly ranked enough to choose 
their own field of study or pass the national university entrance 
exams, but still ranked high enough for local officials to send them 
to teacher training.  In addition, poorer families will continue to 
face the challenge of trying to find the funds to pay the 
registration fees required by many public schools, and to buy 
supplies, uniforms, and transportation to schools.  Post believes 
 
VIENTIANE 00000246  004 OF 004 
 
 
that the GOL is sincere in its efforts improve primary education and 
has identified many of the challenges it faces. It is less clear 
where the GOL will get the resources to overcome those challenges. 
We do not expect to see the kind of investment in education, or the 
political will to drive national social mobilization to promote 
education, along the lines of Korea, Taiwan or Singapore 50 years 
ago.  End comment.