Gender and Development

Lao People's Democratic Republic

Basic Education (Girls) Project, 1998

Project Background

Although primary enrolment and literacy rates in Lao PDR are slowly rising, there is an urgent need to assist more rural and ethnic minority girls to attend and complete primary education in order to overcome rural/urban, ethnic and gender imbalances in the area of literacy and education.

The project preparatory technical assistance (PPTA) uncovered a number of barriers to girls' enrolment and retention in schools, including family economic considerations, girls' involvement in family maintenance and subsistence tasks, the lack of perceived benefits from education, and the lack of appropriate educational services. While poverty and lack of access are issues, the low value placed on education especially for girls is a major impediment. In addition to these, ethnic minority women and girls have to face further barriers to education, including the distance from school facilities, their extreme poverty, and additional cultural and linguistic barriers, such as a lack of fluency in the national language, Lao.

The effect of such differences can be seen when comparing school enrolment for girls across different ethnic groups. For example, Lao Lum girls - whose first language is Lao - account for 67 percent of the total school-girl age population, yet comprise 81 percent of the primary school enrolment for girls. By contrast, Lao Theung and Lao Sung ethnic minority girls, who are not native Lao speakers, account for 23 percent and 10 percent of the total female primary school age population respectively, yet comprise only 15.4 percent and 3.2 percent of primary school enrolments. At the secondary levels, these imbalances become even more marked due to significant drop out levels at the primary level by ethnic minority girls.

Project Design

The primary objective of the project is to improve access to quality primary education for girls in minority areas. The long-term objective is to bring more women into the mainstream of socioeconomic development by progressively improving their educational level. Boys in minority areas will also benefit from the project, although the primary beneficiaries are girls.

The project approach is flexible, which means that the project impact and effects are continually assessed during the implementation, and lessons learned are applied to subsequent activities. The following design features have been built into the project:

1. Provide primary education facilities in 50 districts, and strengthen capacities at the central and provincial levels to plan, manage, and implement school construction and school development programs.

2. Promote community participation in school management to increase the enrolment and retention of children in primary schools, particularly girls.

3. Improve the relevance, quality and efficiency of primary education through supplementary materials and adapted curricula; in-service support for teachers and school principals in multigrade schools and schools in ethnic minority areas; professional supervision for teachers, and support for the recruitment and training of ethnic minority teachers.

4. Strengthen management support systems at the Ministry of Education, and educational capacities of the Ministry of Education, the Provincial Education Service and District Education Board.

In total, the project will support an estimated 375 new multigrade primary schools and 50 five-classroom complete schools. Communities will as a result be provided with quality village-based primary schools, staffed by trained teachers and equipped with adequate and relevant learning materials.

Gender Inclusive Design

Key project design features and strategies to assist ethnic minority girls and rural poor girls to pursue education cover the following areas.

To increase the enrolment and the retention of rural and ethnic minority girls the project:

• Targets hard-to-reach unserved or under served small ethnic minority communities, typically in remote rural areas.

• Provides targeted financial assistance to ethnic minority girls to reduce the private cost of education to poor families.

• Promotes community participation in school management by involving village committees, the Lao Women's Union, and NGOs. The participation of women is seen as particularly important as experience from other studies has shown that women's involvement in school management noticeably increases girls' enrolment and retention in schools.

• Supports community-level mobilization activities designed to improve villagers' appreciation of the value of education, such as supporting school construction, maintaining textbooks and community participation in school activities.

The success of teaching is dependent on the availability of teaching and learning materials. When trying to maximize the enrolment and retention of girls and ethnic minorities in primary education, it is important to consider how teaching and learning materials support the needs of these students. The project therefore supports:

• The review of existing materials and best practices, as well as the development, testing, production and distribution of supplementary materials and teacher's guides in needed areas.

• The revision of curricula and instructional materials to match the learning needs of ethnic minority students, especially girls, including the development of locally adapted curricula, such as life skills materials drawn from the local environment.

• Examination of gender and minority issues across the primary school curricula, textbooks, support materials, and teacher training programs, including removing negative stereotypes and representations of women, girls and minorities.

Teacher training and staffing issues, in particular:

• The project seeks to increase the number of female and ethnic minority teachers by supporting 300 predominantly female minority students to train as teachers. Assistance to these trainees will be given in the form of scholarships, health-care allowances, books, educational materials, and commodities such as blankets, mosquito nets, and torches.

• After completing their studies, these recruits will be appointed to ethnic minority schools in project districts.

• In-service training and professional development will also be expanded to address the particular learning needs of ethnic minority students. For example, additional training programs will be developed to address language barriers faced by non-Lao speaking minority children and teaching locally relevant life skills.

As with all projects, monitoring is critical to successful implementation. To facilitate monitoring and management of the project, the project will:

• Strengthen the Ministry of Education's institutional capacity to manage, plan and monitor the primary education system at all levels, including gender capacity building.

• Provide information technology support and the development of management and monitoring capacities within the project management unit, including gender and ethnic minority disaggregated data collection.

• In line with the project's flexible and participatory approach, the project supports a number of studies and surveys during implementation to evaluate and monitor the educational coverage provided to girls and minority students.