Khmer students play traditional musical instruments at a boarding school (Photo: VNA) Soc Trang (VNA) – 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 percent 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 30 billion VND (1.3 million USD), 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 percent 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 72 billion VND (3.1 million USD) 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 percent of local population.
The province has nine boarding schools for ethnic minorities and 159 Vietnamese-Khmer bilingual schools with nearly 146,800 students. –VNA
VNA
