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Wednesday, April 23, 2025
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Laos Expands Military Teacher Training Program to Tackle Teacher Shortage

This Week

As the teacher shortage in Laos continues to affect rural communities, Phongsaly Province has joined national efforts to train military personnel as primary school teachers in remote areas. 

On 22 April, officials in Phongsaly launched a coordinated initiative to collect data on schools with critical teacher shortages and began the process of selecting officers and soldiers to undergo specialized teacher training.

This move follows a  strategy developed by the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Education and Sports to address the education gap in underserved regions. 

Phongsaly is now implementing the second batch of the Primary Education Teacher Training Program, building on the first round held in Savannakhet. Selected military personnel who complete the training and are assigned to teaching roles will receive an additional 70 percent of their basic salary as an incentive.

On 21 April, Luang Prabang Province began rolling out a similar approach. Local authorities, in collaboration with education and military departments, held discussions on how to deploy trained officers and soldiers to schools in remote areas. 

They focused on identifying the most affected schools, collecting data on volunteer teachers who have yet to be officially hired, and planning the logistics of future training sessions.

The growing reliance on military personnel to fill teaching roles comes amid a broader crisis in Laos’s education system, where high school dropout rates remain a persistent issue, especially in other provinces like Attapeu, Sekong, Savannakhet, Bolikhamxay, and Vientiane Capital.

Economic hardships, long travel distances to schools, lack of dormitories, and teacher shortages, compounded by inflation and limited educational infrastructure, have pushed many students, particularly in rural areas, to leave school early and seek immediate work instead.

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