Lao

To qualify to teach at the upper secondary level, students need to have a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Education at NUOL (15 years of total schooling). To teach at the lower secondary level, they need to have completed at least 14 years of schooling with a diploma from 1 of 5 teacher training colleges. To teach at the primary school level, they need a diploma from 1 of 9 teacher training colleges or schools and need to have 11 to 12 years of total schooling. The lack of qualified teachers has been a major obstacle to improving the quality of education in Lao. Given the extremely low salaries of teachers and attractive new private sector opportunities, it is difficult to attract students to the teaching field. Anyone actually teaching in the classroom does receive a 10 percent civil service bonus. Despite this incentive, serious teacher shortages at the secondary level are likely.

To improve the quality of education, in-service training of existing teachers is extremely important. Such training is provided primarily by the Teacher Training Department, the National Research Institute of Educational Science, and the Teacher Development Center (TDC) of the NUOL. In the mid-1990s a new pedagogy was introduced by the Ministry of Education to move away from traditional rote memorization to more active, experiential, and problem-solving, student-centered type learning. TDC training and related text development has emphasized such innovative pedagogy. By 1998 major reform improved efficiency by consolidating 59 small teacher training schools into 9 larger institutions.