The Khmer community now boasts 52 kindergartens, 220 primary schools, 88 junior high schools and 24 senior high schools. On average, each village has two primary schools and one junior high school while four villages share one senior high school, making it easy for children to pursue general education.

As a result, 98 percent of six-year-old Khmer children attend the first grade and 80 percent of the children in the age backet have gone through the primary education.

The province has opened regular literary courses of all educational grades for Khmer students and even monks and nuns. Of almost 600 students of these courses for secondary education, 340 are Khmer monks and nuns, or more than half of the total.

Having graduated from these courses, monks and nuns from 140 pagodas have held literary courses in both Vietnamese and Khmer for almost 4,000 Khmer people.

Khmer children at all grades enjoy free tuition and free supply of textbooks, which cost the provincial budget hundreds of millions of VND.

Provincial boarding schools provide their Khmer students with basic living conditions, from meals to accommodations and scholarships.

The province has disbursed tens of millions of VND from the Vu A Dinh Scholarship Fund and the Educational Promotion Association to support gifted students and reduce drops-out.

Deputy Head of the provincial Service for Education and Training Thach Rinh said though remaining poor economically, Tra Vinh has managed to expand its educational promotion network to all villages and precincts. A large number of villages and precincts and 30 worship places of the Khmer ethnic community have set up communal educational centres which provide not only literary classes but also vocational training courses for Khmer students and monks and nuns.

The model of studying at pagodas is developing in Tra Cu district, where 60 percent of the population are Khmers. District pagodas have held 99 courses on Khmer language and Buddhism for nearly 3,000 Khmer pupils of primary education, dozens of whom have been admitted to secondary or boarding schools every year.

The province has so far sent 157 students from the Khmer community to universities or colleges across the country.

CPVietnam