Viet Nam has made significant strides in education; however, significant disparities between the majority and ethnic minorities still exist. For example, the literacy rate among Mong ethnic minorities aged 15 and above among was only 38%, while the national average was 94%. Similarly 73% of Mong and 86% of Khmer ethnic minority primary school-aged children are enrolled in primary school, while the rate for the Kinh majority is as high as 97%. One immediate cause which serves to explain this disparity is the fact that ethnic minority children do not have, or have very limited access to education in their mother tongues. The official language in school is Vietnamese and only few teachers can communicate in local ethnic minority languages. Consequently, many ethnic minority children struggle to understand their teachers and cannot participate in active learning. This contributes to their poor school performance, school dropout and limited opportunities throughout their lives. The right to be taught in your own mother tongue is clearly stated in the UN Declaration on Minorities in article 4.33. This was highlighted in the report on Vietnam of the UN Independent Expert on minority issues in 2010.4 In Viet Nam, the Constitution enshrines the rights of ethnic minorities to use and protect their own languages and scripts, "ethnic minorities have the right to use their own languages and scripts, maintain and develop their traditions, practices, custom and culture" (Article 5). Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual Education (MTBBE) Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education has been internationally proven to improve ethnic minorities' education attainment, as it helps increase access, improve learning outcomes, reduce repetition and dropout rates, preserve minority languages and local culture, and assist the States to realise the human rights. As part of our support to the Government of Viet Nam to ensure quality, inclusive and equitable education for all, UNICEF has been supporting the Ministry of Education and Training to implement the mother tongue-based bilingual education programme through Action Research since 2008 in three provinces with three different ethnic minorities, namely: Mong, Jrai and Khmer. The programme is now in its fourth year of implementation. The objective of the initiative is to implement a valid and feasible design of bilingual education in ethnic minority languages in pre-schools and primary schools. It also aims at developing policies and practises, including legal frameworks, which will promote the use and development of ethnic minority languages as a means for improving access, quality and equity of education and social services. The approach in Viet Nam is that mother tongue is used as language of instruction and Vietnamese is taught as a subject in pre-school and primary grade 1 and 2. In grade 3-5 Vietnamese is introduced along with mother tongues as a language of instruction. And from grade 5 and onwards students would have developed bilingual skills and are comfortable to read, write and speak both their mother tongue and Vietnamese.