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SISTERS Misheu (left) doesn't go to school; sister Boupheng is luckier: she's enrolled
Nine-year-old Misheu doesn’t go to school. And she probably never will. She spends most of her day doing household chores while her parents are away foraging for food in the woods.
Her 12-year-old sister, Boupheng, is more fortunate. She—and not her sister—will receive a basic education. The family can only afford a school uniform and textbooks for one child.
“In a family, there can sometimes be up to three girls aged 6 or 7 years old,” explains teacher Saochanh Kammaxay. “But the parents will allow only one to go to school because there is no money to buy clothes and learning materials.”The cost? About $4 a year. An average family in the highlands earns less than a dollar a day, with subsistence agriculture the norm. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is helping change this.
In the mid-1990s, only 43% of women in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) were literate, despite the Government’s efforts to guarantee basic education for all. In this landlocked country of 4.7 million people, where almost 40% live in poverty, geographical and often cultural barriers have largely excluded girls from formal education.
Many families can only afford a school uniform and textbooks for one child. The cost? About $4 a year
Now, according to Khamhoung Sacklokham, Director General of the Department of General Education in the Lao PDR Ministry of Education, female student or girl enrollment in many remote villages has increased by up to 20% in the past 5 years. Many see this as a direct result of a partnership between the Government and ADB in an innovative project to provide education for ethnic minority girls in remote areas.
MORE TEACHERS About 300 ethnic minority teachers—mainly female—are being trained
The long-term goal of ADB’s Basic Education (Girls) Project, approved in 1998, is to bring more women into the mainstream of socioeconomic development by progressively improving the level of their educational attainment. It will eventually provide 446 villages with new multigrade schools with a total annual student capacity of 35,680.
By the time the project is completed in July 2005, 52 districts will have new completed schools with a total annual student capacity of 10,000. More than 400 ethnic minority teachers—mainly female—will be recruited and trained. Fifty-two advisers will be trained in supporting teaching practices to meet the needs of minority children, especially girls, and children in multigrade schools; and 4,000 teachers and school principals will receive in-service training in ethnic minority and multigrade approaches.
"Oh, it's very hard, very hard to make change"
- Yangxia Lee, supervisor, Ministry of Education
For example, in the village of Choulesene Mai, with a population of 258, centuries of educational deprivation are slowly changing. There is a new school, one of more than 100 already built in the Lao PDR with ADB funds. It now has 44 pupils, 19 of whom are girls—13 from the Akkha ethnic minority.
Less than 5% of Akkha women today are literate.
Yangxia Lee supervises the Ministry of Education and ADB’s efforts to get more village girls into school. “Oh, it’s very hard, very hard to make change,” she says. “You know how hard we work to get children to go to school like this.”
HOMEWARD BOUND Students heading home after school
As a member of the Hmong ethnic minority, she knows the region, its people, and traditions well.
Saybi Wang, also a Hmong, is a trainee teacher—and already a wife and mother at 16. She is also clear about why she wants a job that will pay $12 a month.
“In my village, there are no ethnic minority teachers. And all the teachers that come to teach here, they will not stay and that’s why many of our ethnic minority children do not have an education.”
At the school in Choulesene Mai, students are asked how many hope to continue school after level five. After some nervous laughter, only the boys raise their hands. But after a bit of encouragement, girls’ hands begin to rise. It’s not a question, after all, that the children are used to being asked. They are simply unaware of the opportunities that exist—that education can provide.
ADB plays a vital role in supporting the efforts of the Government toward the country’s continuing development and integration within the region, says Madame Khempheng Pholsena, Lao PDR Vice-President, Committee for Planning and Cooperation.
The Lao PDR signed a Poverty Partnership Agreement with ADB in 2001, and Madame Pholsena says, “There is a very strong focus within our priorities with the Bank on human resource development.
“We need to invest more in education: more money, resources, and efforts to make education accessible to people, particularly children in ethnic minority and inaccessible areas,” she says.
But providing the schools is often not enough. Attitudes also need to change in remote communities, and the project is helping achieve this. Madame Pholsena says ethnic minorities in remote villages need to understand that children are key to the future of the Lao PDR.
She notes the link between efforts to include girls in the mainstream of education and to reduce poverty in the Lao PDR. Increased access to education for girls will enable them to have more say in their own lives, and to participate more fully in the country’s development, she says.
While the project is aimed specifically at girls, boys will also benefit through easier access to facilities and a higher quality of teaching. The hope is that this will increase in general the student retention rate.
The project’s total cost is $33 million. ADB’s Asian Development Fund—a lending window designed for its least developed member countries—is providing $20 million, with a $4.3 million grant from the Australian Agency for International Development, $7.7 million from the Lao PDR Government, and $1 million from the communities themselves.
An ADB study in the mid-1990s found that most of the 4,000 villages without primary schools were in mountainous ethnic areas. About half of the 8,000 existing schools did not offer all five grades, which meant children had to travel to other schools to complete their education.
The cost of sending children to school in such remote areas also created a financial burden for the mainly subsistence farming families. Education was merely a dream for many ethnic minority girls in remote areas. Of those who did go to school, many dropped out after the first 2 years. A Government study in 1996 found that many rural subsistence households saw little benefit in educating their girls who would eventually be working in agriculture, caring for children, and doing household chores. Subsistence farming families were more likely to send boys than girls to school.
But attitudes are changing. Mr. Sack-lokham attributes this change to the Project’s inclusive nature, whereby the villagers themselves coordinate and participate in planning and constructing schools.
The project is being implemented in two phases. And its benefits are already evident. “The project has brought a big change in the lives of people in these villages,” Mr. Sack-lokham says. “This the first time the villagers have been able to contribute to the planning, land preparation, and construction of a school.”
IMPROVING THE ODDS Only about 43% of women in the Lao PDR were literate in the mid-1990's
Villagers are proud of the schools, and “have a sense of ownership,” he says. “By building not only classrooms, but also toilets and other amenities, more girls have been encouraged to attend schools.”
He also cites the presence of female teachers in schools as a major factor in the higher enrollment and retention rate. The key is keeping the children in class. Though 70% of Lao children enroll in primary school at some stage of their youth, the dropout rate averages 20%.
The Government is working hard to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of primary education for all children by the year 2015, says Madame Bounpheng Mounphosay, Vice-Minister, Lao PDR Ministry of Education.
“Looking forward to the year 2020, our vision is for all children to reach lower secondary education level,” she says. However, the Government faces many challenges, the most significant being financial, and efforts have been made to increase the education budget, she says.
DEDICATION Yangxia Lee working with students at a rural school
Other challenges include the large number of people living below the poverty line, particularly in rural areas; ways to encourage Lao people to understand the importance of education, particularly among ethnic groups in remote areas; and the need to increase the number and quality of teachers.
With the cooperation on the education sector program between ADB and the Lao PDR Government, we have made good progress in the education sector,” she says. “As a result of this fruitful cooperation, Lao children now have access to better schools and a higher quality of education.”
Though geographically isolated, ethnic minority girls in remote villages now have a chance to expand their horizons to participate more fully in their own—and their nation’s—development.
—With contributions from Adrian Brown, Asia-Pacific Vision
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