Policy and practice in Viet Nam

The government of Viet Nam recognises 54 minority ethnic groups and languages. It expresses strong commitment to the development of its ethnic minority communities, about 13 percent of the population, which, however, have missed out on Viet Nam’s dramatic economic growth.

The constitution says that all ethnicgroups have the rightto use their own languages.

Yet using ethnic minority languages ineducation is limited to a small number of schools. Guidelines restrict thelanguage of instruction to Kinh (majority Vietnamese)and only eight minority languages are taught as school subjects. Only 28languages have standardised writing systems; few books exist outside the mainminority languages - Tày, Muong,Cham and Khmer; and there are few ethnic minority teachers, due to the difficulties they face progressingthrough the education system.

Some international agencies supportteacher training initiatives for minority groups - a long term solution.Education agencies are also piloting mother tongue-based bilingual education inareas with one main minority language and a writing system.

Improvingpractice in the highlands

Children in Vietnam’s highlands come from multiple language groups, most withoutactive writing systems. Several languages are often present in one classroombut lessons are all in Kinh.

At pre-school level, Save the ChildrenUK works with ‘key mothers’ in highland communities, buildingtheir skills as teaching assistants so that each class has a resource personwho speaks the children’s language.

Key mothers work with teachers toensure content is relevant, adapting curricula and textbooks to local contextand using active play and learning techniques. They use local language tointroduce new content and the teacher reinforces the message in spoken Kinh.

To help prepare children for primaryschool, Kinh is introduced verbally and children arefamiliarised with the Kinh alphabet. However, one ortwo years of this approach in pre-school are not enough for children to cope atprimary level, let alone to develop essential learning and literacy skills intheir own languages.

At present it is not possible todeliver truly bilingual education through the school system: without writingsystems it is hard to teach in local languages, and schools lack ethnicminority teachers. What can be done in this challenging context?

Strengthening local languages

Save the Children UK is developing anew phase of multilingual education in pre-schools and primary schools. Workingalong a ‘continuum of good practice’, it willbuild capacity to strengthen local languages and teach bilingually. Homelanguages will be introduced as far as possible in pre-schools and primaryschools.

A network of bilingual community teachingassistants including key mothers will work in partnership with teachers todevelop active learning and improve children’s mothertongue and Kinh language skills.

Teaching assistants will help improvecommunication between teachers and children. Teachers will improve their locallanguage skills through language courses and supported communication with localpeople.

The government is now lookingfor practical solutions to address education needs in different languagecontexts, testing locally relevant approaches to fit Vietnam’s situation. Save the Children UK wantsto offer an approach for progressing towards multilingual education (MLE) inthe most difficult contexts in Vietnam.

If MLE is to become both policyand reality, two challenges must be met:

Robust methods for reportingearly successes are needed or the opportunity to influence policy may be lost.Rigorous mechanisms for monitoring longer-term progress are also needed.

Agencies promoting multilingualeducation must reassure local education planners that using minority languagesfor learning in the national language strengthens rather than undermines students' skills in the nationallanguage.