Australia Funds Education in Laos

MEDIA RELEASE

Released By:
Sullivan

The Howard Government has decided to
provide almost $7 million for an education project to benefit children living in
the more remote rural areas of Laos.

As part of our bilateral development
assistance program, the project will help improve the access, quality, and
relevance of primary education of children of ethnic minority groups, and will
particularly target girls.

The funds will finance a key component of
a larger project supported by the Asian Development Bank.

The Bank's 'Basic Education (Girls)
Project' will include the construction of schools and the development of teacher
training and supplementary teaching materials. Australia will fund a vital part
of the project aimed at improving the relevance, quality and efficiency of
primary education.

Australian funding will provide
supplementary and adapted curricula for multigrade teaching (teaching several
grades in a single classroom), teaching of locally relevant skills to minority
children, support for teachers and principals, training of teacher educators,
and the recruitment and training of ethnic minority teachers.

The project will work with the communities
to ensure basic education is relevant for children from the different ethnic
groups and the barriers to attendance are overcome.

Laos is one of the poorest countries in
the world, with almost half of the population living in poverty. The terrain is
mainly mountainous and heavily forested. There are more than 68 ethnic groups in
Laos, with the majority of the population (86 per cent) relying on subsistence
agriculture.

Children living in isolated plateaus and
mountainous areas are less likely to go to school if it is not easily
accessible. Combined with traditional family attitudes, the cost, and the need
for children to help with household work, the result is that fewer children -
especially girls - from ethnic minority groups go to school.

Approximately 4000 villages in Laos have
no access to primary schools, and 38 per cent of primary school teachers are
untrained. A key problem of the education system is the difficulty for primary
schools to attract children and keep them there long enough to learn.

Equity issues and basic education are high
priority areas for both the Lao and Australian Governments. Education is
development's most basic building block and is vital for alleviating poverty.
The long-term aim of the project is to include more women in the mainstream of
socio-economic development in Laos by progressively improving their educational
level.