Main Barriers to Education
- Poverty
- Lack of learning materials
- Shortage of competent teachers
Interventions to Barriers
- Mobile teachers & village teaching assistants
- Provision of learning materials
- Teacher training
In recognition of primary education’s central importance to the realisation of the country’s development agenda, the Government has entered into formal partnership with the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and elaborated reform initiatives, particularly the Education Sector Development Plan for 2011-2015, as well as the subsequent Plan for 2016-2020. The current education sector development plan focusses on, amongst other things, the eradication of illiteracy across all ethnic groups, improving quality, expanding education policy research, and strengthening secondary education, technical and vocational education and training.
To that end, the Government has made substantial progress with respect to increasing access to primary education. For instance, Lao PDR has achieved 98.6 per cent primary net enrolment and near gender parity at the primary level. However, the country’s education sector is not without its share of outstanding challenges. As it happens, there remains an elevated class 1 dropout rate. Also, the country’s OOSC prevalence has gradually crept upwards since an historic low achieved in 2013.
In an attempt to consolidate the gains of the education sector and address the remaining issues, EAC and UNESCO have partnered to increase education access to some of Lao PDR’s most vulnerable OOSC. Through the Strengthening Education System for OOSC project, UNESCO will seek to enhance the institutional capacity of education systems and create a supportive atmosphere for OOSC via sustainable and consistent programme delivery. Specific project interventions include: implementation of flexible-learning programmes equivalent to formal education; providing capacity building training programmes for formal school teachers; and developing literacy and numeracy programmes for OOSC.
Geographic Location: South-eastern Asia
Languages: Lao (official), English, French, various ethnic languages
sources: WPRO, WORLDBANK, Unicef, WORLD FACT BOOK, INDEX MUNDI
Projects
Strengthening Education System for Out of School Children
The Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, and East Timor continue to face challenges in reaching and educating out of school children (OOSC). The EAC-UNESCO Asia Pacific Regional Bureau for Education Strengthening Education Systems for Out of School Children project seeks to enrol and retain 50,000 out of school children in quality primary education programs in the sub-region.