Learning through play empowers teacher Ninkeo and her students
International Day of Education is celebrated on 24th January, with an emphasis on “learning for lasting peace” this year. Despite peacefulness, stability, and progress recorded in the past decades, Laos still faces challenges in ensuring its children are accessing quality education after COVID-19. In a rural community in Southern Laos, an early childhood education teacher witnessed a transformation in her classroom.
Every September, Ms. Ninkeo sees enthusiastic children enter her classroom during the back-to-school period. She also witnessed their number decreasing week after week until the end of the school year. Leaking roofs, cracked wooden walls, rickety tables, and chairs on a rocky dirty floor are the daily conditions in which some of the most vulnerable children of Laos must learn. Teachers like Ms Ninkeo often need to prepare and repair all learning materials and equipment by themselves, with mostly limited resources coming from nature. “We lacked a playground and toys for all children to play,” says the 39-year-old teacher. In these conditions, it is hard for children to stay engaged with their education, and for caregivers to send their young children to study.
While Laos suffered a sharp decline in early childhood education (ECE) enrollment after COVID-19 (-9% of children between 3-5 years old enrolled in ECE programmes in 2021-22, with 1 in 5 children not accessing ECE), enrolment trend is back up during this school year, yet still not reaching the enrollment levels before the pandemic. The limited resources and current economic crisis faced by Laos post-pandemic are putting early childhood education at the background of all other priorities, and children’s future in jeopardy.
As Brazilian songwriter and child champion Raffi Cavoukian says, "If we change the beginning of the story, we change the whole story". This is exactly what World Vision is aiming at with the different Early Child Education programmes initiated in the Southern part of Laos, in Sanamxay district, Attapeu province, where Ninkeo lives with her husband Whan and their two children. With training on the Learning Roots project model, and support with new interactive ways to engage children in their learning journey, Teacher Ninkeo has experienced a transformation: “I am now more confident in teaching and presenting lessons to new generations of students” she says. The Learning Through Play approach has indeed changed the teaching style of the seasoned teacher: “I notice that children are developing more, learning quickly, and it teaches us to emphasize students need to play more while following the curriculum and age”.
Ninkeo is not walking alone through this change. World Vision is working hand in hand with the Ministry of Education and Sports and their representatives in Sanamxay district to ensure the momentum will keep up after the end of the project for the five communities supported by ECE. The education technical programme led by World Vision also involves the whole community in this change, by building the capacities of village volunteers to ensure education doesn’t only stay between the four walls of the classroom.
Ninkeo knows this school year is special: “Children are coming to school because they experience a new way of learning, they have so many more toys, a clean classroom, soft mats... It also enables them to care more for the classroom environment, they know where to put their shoes, how to tidy up the classroom because they want to keep it clean”.
With 40 years of experience working in Lao PDR, World Vision strives for the most vulnerable children to enjoy the fullness of life and ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.