A/HRC/16/45/Add.2 B. Language and education 85. The importance of improving the education outcomes of minorities cannot be overstated. Access to quality and appropriate education is a fundamental gateway to development and poverty eradication for minorities in Viet Nam. It is also essential for the preservation and promotion of minority cultures, languages and identities. Education helps minorities to take control of their lives and to fulfil their potential as equal stakeholders in the development of the State. Improving the access and education outcomes of minority girls should be given particular and targeted attention. 86. The independent expert recognizes the considerable efforts of the Government in the field of education and commends it for its significant achievements to date. The Government has set impressive targets with regard to the provision of schools to all communes, completion of education and the elimination of illiteracy for all those 25 years of age, for example. Her consultations did, however, expose continuing concerns relating to minority access to education, the quality and appropriateness of education methods, and great disparities in education outcomes between majority Kinh students and ethnic minorities. 87. Ethnic minority children should become proficient in Vietnamese in addition to their mother-tongue language to enable them to take part fully in wider society as equal citizens, to contribute their skills fully, and to enable them to claim their rights. The independent expert saw clear evidence that bilingual education ultimately serves to increase the potential of ethnic minority children and communities to learn and use Vietnamese. 88. The new decree on the teaching and learning of ethnic minority languages should explicitly allow ethnic minority languages to be taught and used as a medium of instruction in schools and provide guidance on how this should be implemented. 89. With the ultimate aim of proficiency in Vietnamese and as a means to implement fully the provisions in the Constitution relating to ethnic minority languages, the Government should permit and support bilingual education for ethnic minority children, commencing with their minority language as the medium of instruction in the early years of primary school. This will help ethnic minority children to preserve their cultural and linguistic identity and, as envisaged in article 7 of the Education Law, help pupils from ethnic minorities to easily absorb knowledge when they study in schools and other educational institutions. Creative and flexible approaches to teaching may be demanded in some minority communities that do not have written scripts. 90. In the light of the highly positive preliminary results of the Mother Tonguebased Bilingual Education pilot programme, the Government should increase support for local authorities to apply this approach with technical assistance provided to the provinces by the Ministry of Education and Training and UNICEF. Following the example of Lao Cai province, which adopted the programme and subsequently expanded the approach to other schools, additional provinces should be encouraged to adopt the approach. Consultations with key institutions, including the Communist Party and mass organizations, are encouraged to highlight the benefits of the programme. 91. In provinces where there are challenges to the full implementation of bilingual education programmes, including those with numerous languages or in which ethnic communities are small, educational authorities should be empowered to take specific action to address the needs of ethnic minority children, including by instructing 20