At its 12th session, the provincial People’s Council adopted a resolution on some policies supporting the development of education and training in Yen Bai province, from the 2023 - 2024 academic year through the 2025 - 2026 one, to match local conditions during the period.

Earlier, some issues have emerged after a period of implementing Resolution No 70/2020/NQ-HĐND, dated December 16, 2020, and Resolution No 32/2022/NQ-HĐND, dated August 31, 2022, on some policies supporting the development of local education and training during 2021 - 2025.

After no longer benefiting from the Government and the province’s support policy since communes were recognised as new-style rural areas, nearly 2,000 students living faraway from schools are unable to go to school and return home within a day each year. There are many students who are from poor and near-poor households or without guardians and want to stay at school, but due to disadvantaged backgrounds, their families are unable to cover the fees for their stay at school. Therefore, many of them are at risk of having to drop out. This fact has affected the number of students as well as the maintenance and improvement of illiteracy eradication and education universalisation.

Besides, the two resolutions stipulated assistance for students of general education but did not include the support policy for kindergarten children in particularly disadvantaged communes and villages.

To deal with the abovementioned problems and help improve education quality province-wide, the provincial People’s Council released a new resolution to replace Resolution No 70 and Resolution No 32. It includes seven policies inherited from the two previous resolutions and seven new ones to meet demand in reality.

In particular, the newly issued policies include financial assistance for meal and rice purchase costs for students who are from poor and near-poor households, orphans, abandoned children, and those without guardians in new-style rural communes and stay at school for a whole week; financial assistance for lunch costs for kindergarten children who no longer benefit from the Government’s Decree 105/2020/ND-CP when communes are recognised as new-style rural areas; financial aid for educational establishments that have kindergarten classes to prepare meals for kindergarten children under Decree 105/2020/ND-CP; along with financial aid for management of semi-boarding students; among others.

The issuance of these new policies is expected to substantially help maintain and increase the number of students attending school, improve education quality at semi-boarding schools for ethnic minority students in the communes with particular socio-economic disadvantages when the localities gain the new-style countryside status, thereby contributing to the promotion of child care and education and meet educational development targets in disadvantaged areas in Yen Bai province.