User:Education project

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Education for ethnic minority children in Vietnam
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Vietnam’s main objectives today are to achieve strong economic growth and further reduction in poverty. It has achieved remarkable economic success since the Doi Moi (renovation) process in 1986, posting annual average growth in real GDP of about 7.5 per cent since 1993, and a reduction in poverty from 58 per cent in that year to 13 per cent in 2008[ ]. Despite these significant progresses, the country still faces the persistent problem of poverty amongst the ethnic minorities. This stems from the lack of attainment of basic education of ethnic minority children. While the country has affirmed its commitment to provide education to the nation’s young through its embrace of Education for All, 20% of ethnic minority children in Vietnam still have no access to basic education according to UNESCO (2005). There is a serious inadequacy in basic education for these children of ethnic minority which needs to be addressed. If these children continue to be shortchanged in their education, they will end up remaining poor, without a fair chance to strive for a better life.

Vietnam is a multi-ethnic society with more than 54 ethnic groups. While the Kinh group who comprise about 86% of the population use the official Vietnamese language, the remaining 14% of the population belong to 53 different ethnic groups with diverse languages systems of their own.

The Ministry of Education has been actively striving to improve the quality of education for minority children. While language programs have largely been beneficial for those ethnic groups with their own written languages, such as the Cham, Bahnar, Ede, and Khmer groups there remains a large number of ethnic minority children such as those in the Raglai, Ray, and K’ho groups whose languages are not in written forms. These children still face many challenges in attaining basic education. According to an official study for the academic year 2007-2008[ ], about 70% of ethnic minority children could not understand nor speak the Vietnamese language before reaching grade one.

In a revision to the national education curriculum to use Vietnamese as an official language for teaching and learning in schools, the Ministry had recognized the possible difficulties faced by children from non-Vietnamese speaking ethnic minority groups. “Teacher assistants” were therefore placed in classes with ethnic minority children to support their learning. However, there emerged a new problem; a lack of supply of teachers who could communicate in both Vietnamese and the minority language. Indeed, only 5%[ ] of primary school teachers are from ethnic minority groups, and they have limited opportunities to attain formal training in their respective ethnic minority language. Moreover, of a total of 200 institutions of higher learning, only four currently teach ethnic minority languages.

Other factors which explain the lack of educational attainment in ethnic minority children also include a lack of classroom resources in the form of textbooks and supplementary materials. There are also social factors which attribute to the phenomenon too. In addition to the ethnic group’s traditional attitude towards education and the family’s financial ability to support a child’s schooling, gender roles also partly explain the gap. For example, ethnic minority girls continue to lag behind both Kinh girls (10% gap) and ethnic minority boys (13% gap) in terms of school enrolment[ ].

Quoting Gay McDougall, the UN Independent Expert on minority issues, “Access to quality and appropriate education is a gateway to development and poverty eradication for minorities, and it is equally essential for the preservation and promotion of minority cultures, languages and identities”[ ]. Indeed, the lack of basic education, especially which of a bilingual curriculum for ethnic minority children, is a big challenge Vietnam has to deal with in order to achieve a more sustainable economic development in the long run.

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Current NGO to deal with the problem
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1.	Aide et action – Brief introduction

Aide et action is a non-governmental organization created in 1981. Their main goal is to achieve access to quality education for all. Since its establishment, Aide et action has conducted 120 projects in 21 countries.

2.	The project - The pre-schooling program for ethnic minority children in selected communities in Khanh Hoa province
 * Target groups and objectives of the project

The project targeted the problem of the lack of access to basic education for the minority groups in Vietnam. It aimed to improve the quality of education for ethnic minority children aged 3 to 5 years old. The project was to be implemented across a period of five years, betweenJuly 2005 and December 2009. Moreover, it was to be supported by the Provincial Education and Training of Khanh Hoa province.


 * Project description

Some of the activities the project engaged in Providing basic education for children The children were taught simple reading and writing skills in Vietnamese. Moreover, they were encouraged to use their mother tongue to communicate with the teachers and other children.

Providing training for kindergarten teachers The teachers enhanced their teaching quality by  using visual aids and toys during the lessons. This encouraged the children to participate more actively in class.

Building new classrooms with teaching and learning equipment Two new classrooms were built to accommodate the increasing number of students. The wall was painted with the children’s drawings. The learning environment is also enhanced with new teaching equipments.

Giving support to children’s school attendance. The school also held four meetings with parents to address issues such as the children’s school attendance and health care coverage..

The outcome of the project was very much positive and brought hope to the community of more promising things to come. The project has had a positive impact on children’s social integration. The teachers have also observed an increase in self confidence and class participation The project increased awareness amongst parents of the need for education for their children. As a result, the number of children enrolled in schools increased substantially -  72 children (2005), 82 children (2006); 80 children (2007) and 86 children (2008). During the last three years, nearly 100% of children of 5 years of age were enrolled.
 * Achievements of the project:

As discussed above, the project has brought positive outcomes in increasing the enrollment rate of the children, building awareness amongst the parents of the need of children education as well as enhancing the teaching quality. However, the project also encountered some challenges. Firstly, the increase in school enrollment seemed only to be a short term rather than long term result. In other words, the project did not solve the problem at the root cause; the financial constraint faced by families which resulted in their children being employed in child labor instead of going to school. Hence, the project should have provided the financial incentives for the parents to achieve a long term outcome. Moreover, the teaching program did not focus on bilingual teaching. Children were encouraged to use their mother tongue in conversational communication rather than academic learning. The project also mainly focused on primary education, higher levels of education were barely touched, which may cause a biased coverage of bilingual education. To achieve this goal, there should be widespread training programs concentrating on bilingual teaching for school teachers.