Speech by H.E Professor Dr. Bosengkham Vongdara, Acting Minister of Education, Lao PDR at The Education Forum for Asia 2005

Beijing, Republic of China

October 13-16 2005

Excellency  Mr Chairperson of the Annual Conference of the Education Forum for Asia 2005

Excellencies Ministers,

Distinguished participants,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure and honour, on behalf of the Ministry of Education of Lao PDR and the Lao participants, to extend our most sincere thanks and appreciation to the organizing Committee of this Forum for inviting me and my colleague to participate in this important Forum.  May I also express our warmest greetings to Excellencies Ministers of Education of different countries and all delegates participating in the Forum.

Excellencies,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

        The Government of Lao PDR permanently pays a great attention to human resource development, in which education plays a central and crucial role. Over the past years, Lao PDR has satisfactorily scored a number of achievements in its educational development. School infrastructure at every level has been constructed so that basic requirements for education of different streams such as general education, vocational training and higher education, and so forth have been met. In the rural and remote areas, education service has also been expanded. Every citizen has been given the opportunity to receive training in different forms and by different means. Private and other sectors have also been encouraged to participate in education development which has contributed to a significant increase in the number of private schools and students. All these positive developments are reflected in an increase in the rates of enrolments of students at all levels across the country as follows:

Net enrolment rate (NER) of primary school children is 84.2% (78.8% female). Gross enrolment rate (GER) of secondary school students is about 54.0% (53.5% female). University’s student/population ratio reaches 860/100,000. One of the main causes of these achievements is the enlargement of education cooperation and assistance both regional and international scales. Therefore Lao PDR places much importance on regional and international cooperation through bilateral and multilateral linkes and could benefit from this, based on national, regional and international needs. Different educational development projects have been successfully implemented through the assistance from many countries. The Ministry of Education aa well as the National University have signed cooperation agreements with many countries and universities in which teaching staffs and students exchange are one of main priorities.

Excellencies

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The above-mentioned cooperation activities signify that educational cooperation amongst countries is very important and valuable, it contributes considerably to the development of education in our Asia-Pacific region and the world. Through organising a number of educational and cultural activities within the region, the youths and people of the region could develop better mutual understanding and get closer to one another, which reflected in the exchange programs of staff and students, joint research and so forth.

With the Republic of China, the Ministry of Education of Lao PDR acknowledges deeply the important role of cooperation between our two countries in promoting education development through capacity building over the past decades. The Ministry of Education of Lao PDR  highly appreciates the continuous and precious assistance of the Republic of China for providing a large number of scholarships for Lao students to undertake studies in various fields in China, which contributes considerably to socio-economic development of Lao PDR as a whole, especially to education and human resource development. In the near future, according to the needs of the two countries, relationship between Lao PDR and the Republic of China will be strengthened even further with more cooperation projects. In the field of education, exchange activities of both countries will be promoted. More impressively, the Republic of China will consider an increase in number of scholarships to the Lao students at various fields at all levels in different Chinese universities. Furthermore, according to the demand for Chinese language learning in Lao PDR, the Republic of China will further assist with the establishment of a Chinese language centre at the National University of Laos and will also provide Chinese language teachers to the centre. In the meantime, exchange of visits of high senior education officials will also be on agenda of the new phase of cooperation between the two Ministries. All the above-mentioned activities show fruitful relationship and cooperation as well as profound mutual understanding between the governments and peoples of the two countries.

Once again, on behalf of the Ministry of Education of Lao PDR and on my behalf, I would like to sincerely thank the Government of the Republic of China, especially the Ministry of Education for providing valuable assistance to the education development of our country. It seems to me that in this XXI Century one of the most important and crucial commitments of educators and Education Ministries of our countries is to further strengthen and develop our closer relation and cooperation, which will significantly and efficiently contribute  to the quantitative and qualitative development of education in each country.

Lastly, I would like to thank Mr. Chairman for providing me the opportunity to express some ideas in this meeting. May I wish the conference a fruitful success.

Thanks to all honourable guests and distinguished participants for your attention.