Soc Trang province upgrades schools in Khmer communities
The Mekong Delta province of Soc Trang has been upgrading infrastructure for schools in remote areas and Khmer communities as the new school year is only two weeks ahead.
 |
Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Tran Van Chuyen said in the 2017-2018 school year, the administration had approved funding for building and repairing nearly 940 classrooms and 150 other function rooms at local schools, and procuring new educational equipment. More than 60% of the finance had been provided for schools in ethnic minority areas.
Notably, Soc Trang has finished the construction of the Tran De boarding school for ethnic minority students. The school, built at total cost of over VND30 billion (US$1.3 million), will be put into use in the coming academic year.
Infrastructure building and upgrade have helped improve the educational quality. This also aims to help more schools meet national standards when 244 or 44.4% of 549 schools in the province have been recognised as national-standard schools at present.
However, Chuyen also admitted that investments in school infrastructure in ethnic minority areas are modest compared to the set target.
From 2018 to 2020, Soc Trang will spend more than VND72 billion (US$3.1 million) on building 10 classrooms and 122 dorm rooms to improve the learning and living conditions for ethnic students at boarding schools, he added.
Soc Trang has the largest number of Khmer people in Vietnam with more than 400,000, making up 31% of local population.
The province has nine boarding schools for ethnic minorities and 159 Vietnamese-Khmer bilingual schools with nearly 146,800 students.
