The Central Highland province of Dak Lak boasts the largest number of schools, classes and students in the region thanks to its annual investment in education, according to the Central Steering Committee for the Central Highlands.

Local authorities earmark part of the annual budget to repair and build at least 900 classrooms every year, enabling children from most of the communes and villages to go to school.

The province has also spent nearly 53.5 billion VND (2.5 million USD) buying textbook and essential learning tools for about 149,000 students from ethnic minority groups or beneficiary social welfare families.

Particularly, in the 2014-2015 school year, the province is to introduce a set of Ede-language textbooks to local primary schools to meet the demand of children from the ethnic group.

Other provinces in the region have also invested hundreds of billions of VND into upgrading schools in remote areas and buying textbooks for children of ethnic minority groups in preparation for the upcoming school year.

According to the Steering Committee for Central Highlands, the region has 6,271 schools of all levels with 97,409 classrooms and drawing more than 1.4 million students, over 32 percent of whom are from ethnic minority groups.

The Central Highlands provinces comprise of Dak Lak, Dak Nong, Lam Dong, Gia Lai and Kon Tum, with a population of over 5.4 million people, 25.7 percent of them being ethnic minorities.-VNA