Vietnam keen on improving education quality for Lao students

Improving the quality of education for Lao human resources has been a focus of Vietnam in an effort to nurture the long-standing relation between the two countries.

According to the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), about 30,000 Lao students have been sent to study in Vietnam since 1958. Many of those students have then served as senior officials in Lao state apparatus.

As of 2015, approximately 9,300 Lao students were attending courses in Vietnam; 74 percent of whom, or 6,870 students, were awarded with scholarships under agreements inked between the two governments or between localities of the two sides, MoET Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga said.

Lao students in Vietnam. Photo: vov.vn

Vietnam has also supported Laos in building schools and developing educational facilities.

The MoET has been helping Laos build seven boarding schools for ethnic minority people with funding sourced from Vietnam’s non-refundable aid program, while nine residential halls for Lao students have been constructed in Vietnam.

The MoET and the Lao Ministry of Education and Sports are working together on a project to increase the quality and efficiency of bilateral cooperation in education and human resource development between 2011 and 2020.

Under the program, study materials and textbooks for teaching the Vietnamese language were developed for use in Lao schools since the 2011-2012 school year.

A Faculty of Vietnamese Studies was also established at the National University of Laos, alongside the construction of a high school in Luang Prabang province and a boarding school in Xiangkhouang province.

Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga made several recommendations to improve the quality of Lao graduates in Vietnam. Lao students should be required to learn Vietnamese before being accepted to attend a course in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese language should also be mandatory in training curriculum for Lao guest students, he said.

He urged better management of Lao students in Vietnam and greater efforts to ensure that the standard of Lao graduates is at the same level as Vietnamese graduates.