Vietnam to Spend VND4.1T to Build Boarding Schools for Ethnic Students

Vietnam is planning to spend VND4.1 trillion on upgrading and building boarding schools in mountainous provinces by 2015 in an effort to support ethnic students, state media reported on Mar 20.  Nguyen Thi Huyen, chief of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Ethnic Minority People Education Department, said the move is part of the government’s efforts to bring better studying environment to students in such localities. Under the project, at least one boarding school will be built in each province and district with a large number of ethnic minority residents. Teachers and managers at boarding schools will receive further training to improve the quality of teaching and learning as well as management. Vietnam will strive to have 317 primary boarding schools nation-wide serving 85,000 ethnic students by 2015. The country also aims to have 30% of new boarding schools meeting national standards. A website about boarding schools and a journal on boarding education will also be published as part of the project. The Southeast Asia country has 54 ethnic minorities with the majority of Viet people making up for  85.7% of total population while ethnic people account for one seventh of Vietnam’s population living in different parts, mainly in mountainous, boundary and remote areas. In fact, ethnic minorities in Vietnam are facing numerous difficulties in different ranges, even unfair judgment from the largest community, Viet or Kinh people. (Dat Viet – National Land Mar 21 p7, Nhan Dan – The People Mar 21 p5)