Box 3. MDG Goal Two: Achieve Better Education for All Vietnam Development Goal: Universalize education and improve education quality Target 1: Increase the net enrolment in primary school to 97 percent in 2005 and to 99 percent in 2010 Target 2: Increase net enrolment rate in junior secondary school to 80 percent in 2005 and 90 percent by 2010 Target 3: Eliminate the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005, and the gap with ethnic minorities in 2010 Target 4: Increase literacy to 95 percent of under-40-year-old women by 2005 and 100 percent by 2010 Target 5: By 2010 have improved the quality of education and increase full-day schooling at primary level (exact target depends on funding).

Source: Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2002) There are a number of reasons for children not being in school. There is considerable evidence that the key factor revolves around affordability: even when exempted from paying tuition fees, poor families often cannot afford the other costs associated with sending children to school. Additional causes of not being in school are lack of access to a school or the poor quality of education on offer that discourages parents from sending their children to primary school. But there are also crucial issues on the ‘demand’ side of education: for the poorest households, education may be a lower priority than basic survival, and children may need to work to contribute to household income or contribute to unpaid labour such as housework.

The goal and targets imply the need for a strategic focus within the education sector on important shortcomings. To achieve the targets, 1.6 million primary school-aged children -- currently out of primary school (1 million of them from the lowest two expenditure quintiles) -- will have to be included in mainstream education.

Three key challenges remain in relation to basic education: the elimination of socio-economic and geographic disparities, the expansion of basic education to meet the international targets of universal primary education, and the need to improve the quality of teaching and learning outcomes.

Eliminating disparities - Those children least likely to be at school — those in the lowest quintiles, those in the central highlands, northern uplands, central coast and Mekong Delta regions, and ethnic minority children will have to be particularly targeted. This will need to include measures accompanied by additional resources to reduce and eventually eliminate the direct costs of school attendance borne by poor families such as user charges. Enhancing school enrolment of ethnic minority children will also require the provision of education in their mother tongue at least as part of kindergarten-based school readiness programmes. Ethnic minority girls are often particularly disadvantaged due to a tradition of early marriage, in combination with late enrolment in grade one. Efforts to encourage school attendance by this sub-group will need to accommodate such cultural challenges.

Expanding basic education - Achieving universal primary education and providing free or affordable full-day schooling to all is clearly a formidable challenge. The current level of provision relies heavily on parental and community support. The government aims at increasing the percentage of students with full day schooling to 70%. This would require substantial additional resources on a recurrent basis. It is important that this does not lead to an increase in the private costs of education, which are already high for poor households. The most feasible initial option is better targeting of limited resources to enable all children who either do not attend or who do not complete primary education to benefit from half-day 18