Education in Mekong Delta yearning for heavy investment
All through Vietnam, the society is preparing for the new academic year of 2019-2020. Sadly, despite being a key agricultural region, the Mekong Delta region is short of both infrastructure and human resources to successfully achieve the educational goals for this year. This results from the unequal investment and requires immediate remedies.
Having a population of nearly 18 million people and contributing around 27 percent to the national GDP annually with a foreign currency income of US$3 billion, the Mekong Delta region should have received corresponding educational investment to regenerate the labor force. Yet statistics show that compared to the average national spending from the state budget for a kindergarten or high school student, at over VND8.372 million per year (approx. $362), the one in the Mekong Delta is merely around VND7.38 million a year ($319). This is the lowest in the whole nation.
The Vietnam State Treasury reported that in the period from 2011 – 2016, local state expenditure including the subsidy of the central government on kindergarten and school education in Vietnam was around VND155,000 billion ($6.7 billion) per year, VND24,603 billion ($1.06 billion) of which was the expense in the Mekong Delta. Accounting for 17.5 percent of the total quantity of school students, this region only received 15.9 percent of the total national spending.
