Looking on the macro level, the government should support the programs in every parts

of the countries such as the provinces with poverty which has also been classified as the places

with the worst education in Laos. But this leads us to the root problem that prevents us from

doing such, which is the insufficiency of the money that the government can use to spend on

improving the condition of the country education. So we think one way to solve the education

issue is to decrease the poverty rate of the country by improving the economic problem so that

the country would have more money to use on developing the life condition of its people. Due to

the fact that Laos boundary is far from the sea, jobs that are available for the people in Laos are

jobs like building hydroelectric dam, fishing, and agriculture which are still not enough to fund

the people who are in need of money to live in a good condition. The policy we think the country

can use to help reduce the poverty rate of the country is the tourism policy. Laos has a lot of

attractive historical site and beautiful nature which can be used to promote the country tourism.

Improving tourism might cause the economic of the country to develop which will increase the

flow of money in the country so the government can use the money they gain to lower the

poverty rate in the country and help improving the life condition of its people in varying fields. In

this case, the Lao government should start with the education field which we think is the most

important foundation of any country because a country would have more chance to develop if

the people of the country is more educated and have a better understanding of the situation

they are in. The main problem of the education in Laos is that the students are more likely to

dropout from the school so we think the best way to solve this problem is to make the people

know the importance of education and to convince them to keep sending their children to

school.

As we did the research, we found out that the province with the worst education is

Saravane. The percent of total schools in the Saravane province is 9.35%, comparing with the
other provinces with at least about 12% to 48%, making it the province with the least percentage

of total schools. Even though, Savannakhet, the province on the north of Saravane, may have

one of the highest amount of illiterate population, but the province provides schools and

universities more and better than Saravane which makes the percentage of illiterate levels for

people in Savannakhet a little lower than of the people in Saravane. Beside the overpopulation

and the insufficient amount of facilities providing education, Saravane also suffers from high

rates of poverty due to the lack of jobs and funding as mentioned in the paragraph above. The

problem caused by poverty is that not every family can afford to send their children to school. To

add to that, there are still problem of ethnicity as there are population of minority groups in Laos

whose are influenced by their ancestral beliefs. Most of those groups teaches their descendants

through myths so there are still generations who strongly think that they should stay with their

families and believe in the supernatural as they always did since the generation of their

ancestors. Therefore, they are not open to changes, and they dont usually accept new ideas.

Moreover, the geography of the province is made up of 60% of high mountains, plateaus, and

highlands, which are difficult for transportation. The struggle with transportation can also lead to

some of the other factors that may affect in low literacy in Saravane which is the lack of

personnels to teach the students in these areas because of their hard-to-transverse

geographical terrains.
 While we were researching, we found some of the solutions that might be able to solve

the problems in Laos education. There are four solutions that we think will be the most helpful in

improving the educational system of Laos. First of all, we believe that the schools in Laos need

better collaboration and more engagement from the local communities in order to develop the

education of their own children. With help from the locals, the development can go beyond what

was expected, not only improving the educational system itself but also increasing the chance

for the children to receive the basic education they need. Second, to achieve the goal, Laos

government might need to increase the capacity of the school personnel. Starting with the

school director, who are the heads of the school. They need to understand the purpose and

importance of education which they might be able to do so if they are informed. Also, the

teachers have to be trained so that they could teach with their full potential and would be able to

understand more about their students. The next methods is to improve school food as food is

also considered as one part of the school which is important for the country to develop the

overall education of Laos. Some of the children in Laos have to dropout from their school as

their family doesnt have enough money to afford both the school fee and food. From the

research, there are schools which attend to improve the quality of the school food and give out

some for the students to bring back home. Those schools have less dropout rate than the other

schools as the students would gain both knowledge they want and food they need for their

family. Fourth, the government should develop and improve the equipment, the environment,

and infrastructure of the school. With better equipment, the teachers would be able to organize

better ways of teaching that might help the students more enjoy about the lessons. The

environment and the infrastructure of the school are also factors that would create an

atmosphere that is more suitable for the students to learn. If all of the people involved work

together and help improving the education of the country, the goal might not be too hard to

achieve in a short period of time.