News

Laos Ranks Lowest in Global English Proficiency Test

The Education First English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) conducts the world’s most expansive ranking of adults by their fluency in English. This year’s index featured 111 countries, Laos ranked the lowest on the list and Netherlands ranked the highest.  The countries were divided into five bands: ...

Amrita Paul

As Laos inches closer to economic default, underage girls face a higher risk of child marriage

Houa* sat on the doorstep of her bamboo house helping her grandmother pluck a chicken. She is not even ten years old, but she is learning how to become a ‘good wife.’ As the Covid pandemic and economic crisis hit the family hard, Houa dropped out ...

BEATRICE SIVIERO

Southeast Asia’s abortion laws reset at the borders

Abortion is a global health issue, impacting individuals and families regardless of ethnicity, income, social status or nationality. Yet there is no worldwide legal standard for the practice of terminating a pregnancy. Lawmakers and governments hold sway over access to abortion, or its abolition. In the ...

BRIAN P. D. HANNON

Japan funds environmental awareness, child protection programmes

The Japanese government has provided more than $800,000 in funding to two Japanese NGOs, under its grant assistance framework. The NGOs are engaged in raising awareness of environment issues and eliminating violence against children in schools. The grant contract was signed on March 12 by Japanese ...

Ry Sochan

Online child abuse spikes amid pandemic

Vietnamese children face greater risks of sexual abuse with prolonged school closures and online classes exposing them to exploitation via social networks. A month before graduating, Khanh Ngoc, a high school student in Hanoi, received a message from a strange Facebook account. Opening it, she encountered ...

Phan Duong

Proper nutrition feeds into safer pregnancies and healthy children

Every day families welcome new life into the world. New parents and caregivers want to ensure each child gets the best start but the most basic of needs, proper nutrition, is not equitably accessible. This has devastating effects. Nearly half of all deaths in children under ...

STÉPHANE VIDRY AND BOON YEE YEONG

Thai students suffer inequality and poor mental health as pandemic lingers

At a protest earlier this month, a large banner was unfurled on the side of an overpass that read, “1.8 million children are about to fall out of the school system due to online instruction that doesn’t give a shit about them.” A young girl ...

MARK S. COGAN

Younger children struggle with distance learning

Like many Thai students, Tanwa Ngernpot, a six-year-old student in Nonthaburi province, can’t return to school after the New Year holiday. The Education Ministry last week ordered all public and private education providers in the “maximum control zones” of 28 provinces to be close until Jan ...

DUMRONGKIAT MALA

Room to Read extends support for education

Lao children will benefit from a project to strengthen education, funded by Room to Read at a cost of more than US$3.6 million. The ‘Enhancing Education for Lao Children Project phase V’ is also financing the Reading Promotion Project in Attapeu province, with US$135,935 provided by ...

Times Reporters

Learning lessons from COVID-19 in Myanmar

Thaw Lay, a high school student from Yangon, the capital of Myanmar, knew that this school year would be unlike any other. “I was excited, but I also knew that things would be a little different, when school reopened later this year”, he recalls. Thaw Lay ...

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