Girls’ education in lao pdr

1. Drawing lessons from problems
CONTEXT: Girls’ Education in Lao PDR
Among the three evaluations analyzed, the evaluation of the: “Basic Education (Girls) Project” in LAO People Democratic Republic, offers plenty of issues to our analysis. This evaluation is about a project aimed to improve access and quality of education for girls, especially those who are living in remote regions, financedby the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and AUSAID, and executed by the Ministry of Education from May 1999 to July 2005.
However, to better understand the national context with its policy we firstly did a brief review of some institutional documents about Education in Lao.
In the first instance, the Government places Education “as one of the four pillars of the Poverty Reduction Strategy”. Buteducation is also a big commitment in all the documents and agreements between the State, the international community and its citizens. This commitment is also expressed to the design of "a comprehensive, balanced and harmonious Sector Wide Approach": in this view, the introduction of national poverty reduction strategies is a mechanism for explicitly linking international commitments and agreementswith national policies, public expenditure allocations and poverty reduction goals.
For instance, according to the UN Millennium Declaration, one of the National Socio-Economic Development Plan (NSEDP) 2006-10 goals is “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling” (italic is ours). In fact, Lao’s Government identifiedin 2000 in the Five Year Education Development Plan (2001-2005) three "pillars" of educational development: (i) equity and access; (ii) quality and relevance; and (iii) strengthened administration and management.
In relation to the pillar we concern (equity and access), and consistent with the goal of the project evaluated, we can read how
Increasing primary school attendance and literacyrates particularly for people in under-served areas, such as ethnic peoples, children with special needs and girls, is an important foundation step. (Committee for Planning and Investment, 2006, p. 12)
In the second place, Lao’s commitments with international goals about education are also clearly visible by its participation in the "Fast Track Initiative" (FTI) and by the elaboration of the“Education For All National Plan of Action (EFA-NPA) 2003-2015”, in which the Basic Education (Girls) Project represent a consistent part. EFA is recognized as “the main vehicle for expanding access to primary and lower secondary education and adult literacy”, thus Dakar goals will be achieved by consolidating the three major tasks above mentioned, as stated in all the analyzed documents: the “Five YearEducation Development Plan (2001-2005)”, the “Education For All National Plan of Action (EFA-NPA) 2003-2015” and the “National Socio-Economic Development Plan (NSEDP) 2006-10”.
As a conclusion we can say that Lao’s Government is doing a big effort to align and harmonize its strategies for the gender equity in education with the international framework and that, on the other hand, donors like ADB andAusAID are doing the same effort by designing projects with the same goals. At the same time, since they agree about goals and solutions we assume that donors and government are sharing the same vision of gender problems in education.
According to the goals marked by EFA and the UN about universal primary education, the project’s overall goal was “Provide all primary school children with equalaccess to quality primary education and an environment that encourages them to attend school regularly and successfully completed the 5-year cycle”, and its purpose, “Contribute to improvement in equitable access, relevance, quality, efficiency, and management of primary education in 50 districts”.
Problems and project’s theory of change
Using the problem tree method, we will try to organize...