Country Report

Education for the Future in the Lao PDR

Distinguished Mr.Chairman
Distinguished Guests
Distinguished Participants
Lady and gentlemen

On behalf of the senior school students from the Lao PDR, I would like to express our sincere thanks to the Executive Committee of the Education Fair 2000 in Bangkok to invite us and to give us all facilities to participate in the Education 2000.

It is my great pleasure to present the Education for the Future in the Lao PDR.

Laos is a small landlocked country, situated on the Indochinese Peninsula of South-East Asia with a total population of 4,8 (four point eight) million distributed over a total area 236.800 ( two hundreds thirty six thousand eight hundred) square kilometer.

Like other countries, education in Lao PDR plays an important role for human resource development and provides knowledge, good moral behaviour and good culture for the people. It requires the commitment of all people in society.

So far, after the proclamation of the Lao PDR, our Lao government has been emphasized on Educational system issue. Our educational system comprises of pre school education, general education, technical and vocational education and higher education. Apart from these, there is non-formal and private education. However, as you are aware, Laos PDR is a developing country. For all levels of education, it is facing many challenges and has also a limited budget. And, it isn’t easy to resolve the problems of illiteracy, particularly people in rural areas. Or even in the city, schools are not enough for the increasing number of students.

For our schools we are facing following problems:

-Firstly, we are lacking sufficient fund to supply all the equipment needs such as textbooks, laboratory apparatus, computers, library…etc.

-Secondly, we don’t have enough qualified teachers.

-Thirdly there is a shortage of classrooms and schools.

In addition there is an inadequate curriculum in terms of innovating the education with new information technology such as the use of computer and the internet in the school.

Those terms which are mentioned above are necessary for education. So, in the process of human resource development we need a new culture of teaching and learning which is introduced as an integral part of the transformation process. In order to cope with the challenge in the new century, teachers themselves need additional training and should have new education of methods and approaches to delivery of education and students should be developed the sense of creativity, community, solidarity and international understanding. Students’ lessons should be practically connected to real life situation.

To resolve the problems mentioned above, our Lao Government has given a great effort to improve our educational system by many ways such as revising the curricular and training of teachers through scholarships provided by other countries or international organizations. Teachers got also a scholarship to participate in a training course abroad.

Another one worrying point is the young adults in our society nowadays. Many young people these days use drugs. Some use them for a good use, but sometime they use them just for fun or because the environment they are in. Drugs and people are closely involved, especially young people. Young adults these days use drugs without knowing the real harm in it and don’t fully understand the health risks. To prevent these problems, it is important for family, teachers to understand and look after them for their bad behaviour which seems to be like drug addicted. Always discuss involve communication, open family relationship such as warm, loving and education are one of the best guarantees against drug abuse and a variety of other problems.

In conclusion we can say that to resolve problems in all areas of work, the government must be able to provide a good educational system which includes qualified teachers, schools with good facilities, adequate curriculum and good environment. The students themselves must contribute as much as they can to further learning and access to the new information technology through the learning process in the school and education in the family and in the society.

We are appreciated to be here to share with all the participants from different countries regarding the education for the future.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.