The second phase of China’s Brightness Journey, an initiative focusing on human resources under the Lancang Mekong Cooperation, was launched yesterday at the Toun Fa Chinese School in Phnom Penh.

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Savannakhet University is set to become the first model university on business administration and economic studies in Laos, an initiative it is now developing and intends to reach the goal by 2020. President of Savannakhet University, Assoc Prof. Dr Bounpong Keorodom told a media team from Vientiane Times and the National Radio during their visit to the university last week that the university will also be a model in terms of buildings, libraries, curriculums and infrastructure. The new design has been funded by the Asian Development Bank. The government approved a budget of US$31 million through the National Assembly two years ago for the model university. Since then, infrastructure work has almost been completed on over 300 hectares in Nongpheu village of Kaysone district, Prof. Dr Bounpong said.

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Everyone knows that nurturing brainboxes is good for an economy. In Thailand, school reformers have an extra incentive: to narrow differences between rich people in cities and their poorer rural cousins, which have led to a decade of political tension and occasional eruptions of violence. For years shoddy teaching has favoured urban children whose parents can afford to send them to cramming schools or to study abroad. Dismal instruction in the countryside has made it easier for city slickers from posh colleges to paint their political opponents as pliable bumpkins. The dangerous social divide is all the more reason to worry about Thailand’s poor rating in an educational league table published in December. Thailand limped into the bottom quarter of 70 countries whose pupils participated in the maths, reading and science tests organised under the Programme for International Student Assessment. Its scores have deteriorated since a previous assessment in 2012, when researchers found that almost one-third of the country’s 15-year-olds were “functionally illiterate”, including almost half of those studying in rural schools.

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The educational sector has been blamed for the unemployment of 200,000 university graduates, among other issues. A report released by MOET and UNICEF shows that 80 percent of students suffered from gender-based violence at least once, while 71 percent suffered from school violence in the last six months. A report from Plan, an international non-government organization, showed that only 16 percent of female and 19 male students felt secure at schools. A fourth grader at Vo Thi Sau Primary School in Quang Ninh Primary School was at risk of becoming blind after a friend threw a pen into his eyes. Their teachers knew about the accident, but did not inform the parents and the school. A number of cases in which teachers raped, took liberties or sexually harassed female students were reported in 2016. LTH, a music teacher, harmed a sixth grader at a school in Tan Binh district in HCMC five times. LVH in Binh Thoi district of Ca Mau province had intercourse with a ninth grader in a sugarcane field. Dinh Hai H repeatedly deceived and forced schoolgirls to have relations with him.

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The defence ministries of Việt Nam, Laos and Cambodia will step up military co-operation via programmes to be implemented this year. The agreements, boosting long-standing ties of friendship between the three countries, mark ongoing visits (January 8-11) by Lao and Cambodian defence ministers to the central city of Đà Nẵng. In separate talks, Vietnamese defence minister General Ngô Xuân Lịch and his counterparts – Lao Minister of National Defence, General Senior Lieutenant Chansamone Chanyalath and Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence General Tea Banh – reviewed 2016 and discussed measures to boost defence co-operation in 2017. Yesterday morning, Lịch expressed high appreciation of efforts made by defence ministries of Việt Nam and Laos in 2016, especially in education and communications, and highlighted the special friendship among the soldiers of both countries.

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The post VN, Laos, Cambodia boost defence ties first appeared on Open Development Mekong.