(VNF) – The Japanese Embassy and Plan International Vietnam on September 27 officially signed for the second year of project “Quality Pre-Primary and Primary Education for Ethnic Minority Children in North and Central Regions”.

The project is conducted within the scope of the official development assistance funding scheme (ODA), sponsored by Japanese government for Plan International Vietnam.

The total budget is estimated at around USD 560,000 for the period of Oct 2017 to Sep 2018.

Particularly, the project will focus on helping students of ethnic minorities improve their Kinh language (Vietnam’s official language).

Children of ethnic minorities face multi barriers in education (illustrative photo: GD&TD)

At the same time, the project will help upgrade learning infrastructures in targeted localities, to facilitate and encourage kindergarten and primary school’s students to pursue higher level of education.

The project, implemented in 9 communes of Lai Chau and Kon Tum provinces, aims to reach 3,400 children, 400 teachers and 900 parents and officers in local Department and Bureau of Education and Training.

Vietnam has 53 ethnic-minority groups, with the population of 12 million people, accounting for over 13% of the whole country population. However over 40% of ethnic minorities are living in poverty. Despite the relatively speedy growth of the economy and the increasing attention of the country to children development, kids of those groups are still facing a lot of challenges in accessing to quality education.

Poverty, income gap, as well as challenges in implementing strategies in education enhancement has led to the low literacy rate of ethnic-minority children, which is lower than the expected number. (only 71% of them are literate, while this number in Kinh group is 84%).

The disadvantage in education opportunity also limits those children in completing primary school (the rate of children who complete primary school in ethnic-minority group is only 87.7% compare to 97.5% in Kinh group)./.

( Phi Yen )