A young boy at the blackboard
A first grade student points to letters at the board as he sounds them out. When he gets stuck, he looks to the teacher for help. Somsanouk Primary School, Pak Ou District, Lao PDR.
Reading Readiness: Poor learning outcomes rooted in low levels of basic literacy affect children throughout Laos. Kindergarten and pre-primary programs provide children with the opportunity to enter primary school ready learn. This not only boosts learning outcomes over a student’s entire school career, it also has tangible, measurable benefits in the short term, as Pak Ou District education officials explain:
In school year 2015-2016 the drop out rate in grade one was very high in this district—about 15 percent. Today (2018) it is about 5%. The reason for the steep drop: the Ministry of Education’s strategy to expand the school readiness program. Back in 2015 there were only a few kindergartens and early childhood education classrooms in the district. Today there are 35 primary schools in this district and 15 kindergartens. Asked why he thought that made all the difference the official said: “If the children have experience in the classroom before they enter Grade 1, they are better able to manage themselves.”
But the benefits of early childhood education are not enjoyed by all of the children in the community, as principal of neighboring Somsanouk Kindergarten, Ms. Somchanh Hatsady, explains: “The ethnic minorities do not seem to enroll their kindergarten age children in school as much. Maybe they are reluctant? But they usually keep their kids at home and then at the age of six put them into primary school.”
They are missing out on a lot according to Hatsady: social and emotional skills, the foundation for reading and writing, the development of fine motor skills. But they are missing out on even more when the language spoken at home is not the Lao language, which is the language of instruction throughout the country.
The results may follow them throughout their time in school and ultimately cut that time short. A recent study found that Non-Lao-Tai students were significantly more likely to lack basic skills in literacy and numeracy than those whose mother tongue is Lao-Tai and these difficulties further compound learning in other subjects. (Source: Delivery of Education Services in Lao PDR: Results of the SABER Service Delivery Survey, 2017, published in 2018 by Angela Demas, Myra Murad Khan, Gustavo Arcia, and Emiko Naka. It was prepared under the auspices of the World Bank and Lao PDR’s Ministry of Education and Sports.)
The study also found that teachers lack training in strategies tailored to non-native language learners. To this end, GPE and its partners are working together to develop a pilot reading readiness program in the Lao-Tai language with the objective of improving the (Lao-Tai) reading readiness of 500 children enrolled in kindergartens or preprimary classes in 127 communities in 14 Districts in Northern Laos, 70 percent of whom belong to non-Lao Tai language groups.
While mother tongue instruction may be appropriate in certain contexts, the existence of 47 ethnicities in Lao PDR, further branching into 160 ethnic groups that speak 82 distinct living languages without written forms (except for the Hmong ethnic group) precludes the identification of effective approaches for developing mother tongue reading readiness programs. (Source: Lao PDR GPE II Restructuring paper P149130 April 2018).
Lao PDR, December 2018
Credit: GPE/Kelley Lynch
Learn more: www.globalpartnership.org/where-we-work/lao-pdr
A young boy at the blackboard
A first grade student points to letters at the board as he sounds them out. When he gets stuck, he looks to the teacher for help. Somsanouk Primary School, Pak Ou District, Lao PDR.
Reading Readiness: Poor learning outcomes rooted in low levels of basic literacy affect children throughout Laos. Kindergarten and pre-primary programs provide children with the opportunity to enter primary school ready learn. This not only boosts learning outcomes over a student’s entire school career, it also has tangible, measurable benefits in the short term, as Pak Ou District education officials explain:
In school year 2015-2016 the drop out rate in grade one was very high in this district—about 15 percent. Today (2018) it is about 5%. The reason for the steep drop: the Ministry of Education’s strategy to expand the school readiness program. Back in 2015 there were only a few kindergartens and early childhood education classrooms in the district. Today there are 35 primary schools in this district and 15 kindergartens. Asked why he thought that made all the difference the official said: “If the children have experience in the classroom before they enter Grade 1, they are better able to manage themselves.”
But the benefits of early childhood education are not enjoyed by all of the children in the community, as principal of neighboring Somsanouk Kindergarten, Ms. Somchanh Hatsady, explains: “The ethnic minorities do not seem to enroll their kindergarten age children in school as much. Maybe they are reluctant? But they usually keep their kids at home and then at the age of six put them into primary school.”
They are missing out on a lot according to Hatsady: social and emotional skills, the foundation for reading and writing, the development of fine motor skills. But they are missing out on even more when the language spoken at home is not the Lao language, which is the language of instruction throughout the country.
The results may follow them throughout their time in school and ultimately cut that time short. A recent study found that Non-Lao-Tai students were significantly more likely to lack basic skills in literacy and numeracy than those whose mother tongue is Lao-Tai and these difficulties further compound learning in other subjects. (Source: Delivery of Education Services in Lao PDR: Results of the SABER Service Delivery Survey, 2017, published in 2018 by Angela Demas, Myra Murad Khan, Gustavo Arcia, and Emiko Naka. It was prepared under the auspices of the World Bank and Lao PDR’s Ministry of Education and Sports.)
The study also found that teachers lack training in strategies tailored to non-native language learners. To this end, GPE and its partners are working together to develop a pilot reading readiness program in the Lao-Tai language with the objective of improving the (Lao-Tai) reading readiness of 500 children enrolled in kindergartens or preprimary classes in 127 communities in 14 Districts in Northern Laos, 70 percent of whom belong to non-Lao Tai language groups.
While mother tongue instruction may be appropriate in certain contexts, the existence of 47 ethnicities in Lao PDR, further branching into 160 ethnic groups that speak 82 distinct living languages without written forms (except for the Hmong ethnic group) precludes the identification of effective approaches for developing mother tongue reading readiness programs. (Source: Lao PDR GPE II Restructuring paper P149130 April 2018).
Lao PDR, December 2018
Credit: GPE/Kelley Lynch
Learn more: www.globalpartnership.org/where-we-work/lao-pdr