Achieve Universal Primary Education
 Education is a powerful instrument for reducing poverty and inequality, improving health and social well-being, and laying the groundwork for sustained economic growth. Although quantitative and qualitative progress in education has been made in the Lao PDR in recent years, a significant proportion of children, especially girls and ethnic groups in remote areas, are not guaranteed an equal opportunity to a basic education. Access to secondary and tertiary education is particularly limited and a significant proportion of the adult population is illiterate. Goal 2 seeks to ensure that by 2015, all primary school age boys and girls in the Lao PDR are enrolled in school. However economic growth coupled with rapid population growth is increasing the demand for education services and for vocationally qualified people. The quality of education available is currently inadequate to meet economic and social demands, even for the few who complete it. The NGPES presents education as a key focus area to assist in poverty eradication efforts. Although more investments will be needed to provide the physical infrastructure, significant attention will need to be paid to the recurrent expenditures in the education sector. Efforts will need to be made to improve the quality of education material, its sheer availability, and to improve the quality of teachers, to have a higher impact on improving performance in the education sector. Furthermore, ethnic diversity poses specific learning challenges regarding language mediums for classrooms.
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Lao PDR
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