CIDA and Education: Achieving education for all in Vietnam

Transcript

Vietnam made enormous progress in developing its education system in recent years, but still faced challenges in rural and remote areas, particularly in meeting the needs of disadvantaged children-poor kids, street kids, kids with disabilities, and kids from ethnic minorities.

Some children had to walk two to three kilometres along steep mountain paths just to get to school. It's no surprise that some never got there and others gave up along the way.

La Thi Huyen: "My name is La Thi Huyen, I'm a new teacher. I graduated this year. It's my first full year teaching. One of the biggest difficulties I face in teaching these children is that all of them are from ethnic minorities and they don't speak Vietnamese very fluently."

As part of its priority theme to secure a future for children and youth, CIDA, along with other donors, including the World Bank, worked with the Government of Vietnam for seven years to improve access to primary school for disadvantaged children such as these-some 2.7 million or 27 percent of all students in Vietnam-and to improve the quality of education in 40 poor provinces.

Together, they:

• Provided more than 3 million textbooks to students, as well as school supplies, and in some cases shoes and uniforms
• Built more than 16,000 new schools
• Trained more than 312,865 teachers and 7,026 teacher's aides

La Thi Huyen: "I have learned how teachers should interact with children, how we should write on the boards. I apply some teaching methods that I learned to make it easier for my students to learn."

The results?

By the end of 2010:

• Primary school enrolment increased from 80 percent to 99 percent
• Primary school completion rates increased from 72 percent to 94 percent
• Drop-out rates fell from 12 percent to 2.5 percent

More than 2.7 million students now have a more hopeful future, and Vietnam is closer to achieving universal primary education for all-one of the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by the world's leaders in 2000.