Inclusive ECCD: - Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and ...

CASE STUDIES
fect enrolment rates, with Lao Soung girls in the
mountains least likely to be in school.
It is acknowledged, however, that this expansion
in access has not been matched by increasing
quality. Schools are often rudimentary and may
lack materials, teaching aids, and books. Many
teachers lack any training and may even have had
only primary education themselves. With very
low pay, most teachers have to supplement their
income by working second jobs or growing food.
Teaching methods have relied on rote learning
and were based on a curriculum which was outmoded
and related little to the lives of children.
The repeat and dropout rates were consequently
very high. In 1990 it took an average of 13 years
for children to complete primary school and fewer
than half of enrolled children achieved this.
(Lao PDR MoE 1990)
Currently, thought is being given to the needs
of small multi-grade schools in isolated villages,
the particular situation of girls, and the problem
of providing suitable education in the complex
cultural and linguistic environment that exists.
Education for All
It is not surprising that a country that has made
such an effort to improve access to primary
school should be strongly committed to the concept
of “education for all”. The Lao government is
a signatory to the Salamanca Declaration (1994)
and the Convention on Rights of the Child
(1991) with their commitments to education. Recently
Laos adopted a decree on compulsory education
(1996) and a plan of action to achieve this
over the coming period. This commitment includes
disabled children.
Create conditions for the handicapped
children who are willing
to study and give them a chance
to study in integrated classes with
non-handicapped children.—ART 13:
POLICY ON COMPULSORY EDUCATION,
LAO PDR 1996
UNICEF/NY/Un-numbered
Children with
Special Needs
Lao culture is warm and accepting. Children have
never been arbitrarily turned away from school
because of some perceived deficiency, but neither
has the school felt it was its responsibility to
teach the child. If parents thought their child
should be in school and could get them there, the
child was enrolled in grade one. But for those
children who needed more than the rote learning
formal system, failure, repetition, and repeated
failure inevitably led to withdrawal at some stage.
Children with clear and obvious disabilities faced
greater problems. If, for instance, it would take
weeks of patient teaching for a child to learn a
simple skill, and if parents had no concept of
what might be possible for their child or had never
come across another child like theirs who had
learned, small wonder that the sensible response
was to feed and care for the child and accept the
inevitable result: nothing could be done. This is
the same response as the teacher who accepts,
without question, that many children will fail and
assumes his/her own actions can not change this
situation.
Eight years ago when the government of Lao
PDR began the process of school improvement,
there was no thought given to the needs of chil-
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