Vietnam has 1.1 million dropouts: Ministry's survey

A study of the Ministry of Education and Training shows that around 1.1 million Vietnamese children aged 5 to 14 have dropped out of. The figure was released at a seminar held by the Ministry of Education and Training on September 11 in Hanoi.

Illustration photo. Photo: Huu Chi

This survey is part of the initiative of the United Nations Children's Fund and UNESCO Institute for Statistics, aiming to promote nations to achieve the Millennium Development Goals that targets all children can go to school in 2015.

The rate children aged 5 to 17 who never set foot in a classroom is 2.67 percent; most of them are from minority ethnic groups.

Speaking at the seminar, Deputy Education Minister Nguyen Vinh Hien said that Vietnam has gained many encouraging achievements in compulsory education for primary and junior high school students to meet the Millennium Development Goals; however, children from disadvantaged families and remote districts are often out of school.

Local governments have not carried out analysis of dropouts of children in order to have proper policies to help them.

Around 6 percent of children are older than the regulated age to classes.

There has been a drastic difference between immigrant and non-immigrant children. Immigrant children to live in families with incomes below the poverty threshold have poor student performance quotas than their non-immigrant peers.

The rate of out of school children of immigrant families is 1.3 times higher than non-immigrant families.

Based on the reality, the survey has provided some proposals to protect children’s right including improving parent’s awareness of education importance and children’s benefit. The government should invest in education in districts where ethnic minority groups are living as well as building more schools in distant regions.

(Source: SGGP)