Educational Disparities
Vietnam has significant disparities in educational participation between ethnic groups. Official development reports routinely note the comparatively low level of education of ethnic minority groups such as the Khmer. For instance, the Vietnam office of the Save the Children Organization as recently as 2015 reported that the gap between ethnic minority and majority groups in terms of enrolment rate is still wide:
The primary school enrolment rate among [the] Kinh ethnic group is as high as 95%, while the rate remains much lower among ethnic minority groups: About 71% of Dao children, 72% H’mong children and 86.4% of Khmer children attend primary school.27
The disparity in school completion rates between minorities and the majority in Vietnam increases sharply at higher levels of education. A UNICEF report dated 2010 noted that the
27 See Save the Children, Vietnam, 2015, ‘Education’, posted on Save the Children, Vietnam website:
https://vietnam.savethechildren.net/what-we-do/education, (page accessed September 2015).
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primary completion rate for Kinh students was 86 per cent, while the rate for ethnic minority children was only 61 per cent.28 Using the latest available statistics from the 2006 Living Standards survey, Baulch and colleagues report that by high school, the gap in enrolment levels between Kinh and Khmers has widened further. In 2006, almost sixty percent of Kinh children attended upper secondary school, compared to just under ten percent for the Khmer (Baulch et al., 2010, p. 18). Like their other ethnic minority counterparts, comparatively few Khmers make it to post-secondary schooling. Baulch and his co-authors note that young people from the ethnic minorities nationwide ‘make up just 2.5 percent of all post-secondary students (compared to their population share of approximately 16–17 percent)’ (Baulch et al., 2010, pp. 22-23).
A substantial gap exists in the literacy rate between Khmer and Kinh groups (Figure 3.1):
Figure 3.1 Literacy rate of Khmer and Kinh ethnic group aged 15 and older, 2009 Source: UNFPA, 2011
It is obvious from this figure that the literacy rate of Kinh is much higher than that of Khmer (95.9 percent compared to 73.5 percent). Importantly, the literacy rate of female Khmers is very low, only 68 percent, suggesting that the opportunity and conditions in accessing the education system for female Khmer may be less favorable.
28 UNICEF, Vietnam 2015. “Education”, posted on UNICEF, Vietnam website:
http://www.unicef.org/vietnam/girls_education.html (page accessed September 2015).
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In comparison to the average educational level of Vietnamese, the educational level of Khmer is quite low for a variety of reasons. Taylor (2004b) analyzed that even though Khmers are favorably provided free of charge education, and reduced requirements in school and university admission, Khmer students still struggle with a curriculum taught in an unfamiliar language (teaching is delivered in Vietnamese) (p.262). In addition, the inconvenient and poor living conditions in the border and mountainside region of Khmer people is not attractive to Vietnamese teachers, and the teaching staff in Khmer localities is inadequate in quantity and poor in quality, which strongly impacts on the quality of education offered to Khmer students (p.244).
Occupational Differentiation
Most Khmer people are farmers; they have been making a living through agricultural production, mainly rice growing, since the land reclamation. Khmers in An Giang’s mountainous massif cultivate rice on two types of field, upper paddy fields29 and lower paddy fields.30 Before 1975, land ownership had existed among Khmer community. Individuals privately owned their land, which was reclaimed by themselves, or they inherited the land from their older generation. Some lands were owned by the temple and referred to as ‘Temple land’. After 1986, especially since the early 1990s, Khmer people in An Giang have been encouraged to change their farming methods to adapt to the ecology of the flooding area and increase agricultural production. With advice from local agricultural officials and researchers, they now sow many new rice varieties in the upper fields and the lower fields as well, and they also used fertilizer together with animal manure and pesticide to achieve an abundant harvest. As a result, the productivity and yield of rice have been noticeably higher. In addition, the expansion of irrigation systems with canals supplying water for fields of the Khmer people in An Giang, has helped them to expand the cultivating area and increase the annual number of crops from one crop a year to two to three crops per year. Their income has increased significantly as a result of greater production. However, Taylor (2014b) argued that the new farming method, which entails high input costs for intensive hired labor and pesticide and fertilizer, frequently returns a
29 The upper paddy fields are normally located at the foothills, as only one crop is cultivated annually on the
rainwater-dependent upper paddy fields.
30 The lower paddy fields can be called wet rice fields and are located in areas which are submerged by
floodwater for some months annually.
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loss and is associated with a growing number of officially recorded landless Khmer households (pp.187-188).
Corn, sweet potatoes, peas, cucumber and cassava are also grown as additional crops after the rice season. Khmer farmers have also cultivated fruit trees, such as mango, jackfruit, cashew and banana. Sugar palms are normally grown along the edges of rice fields and harvested and processed for multi-products. Apart from farming, Khmer people in An Giang also raise domestic fowls (such as chickens and ducks) and animals (such as cows, buffalos, pigs and horses) in order to use them for work (such as drawing plough/rakes and carts) associated with agricultural production, rural mountain transportation, to provide food for daily needs of residents as well as to serve their trade. Several Khmer families have been living on the cattle trading business with dealers from other areas for generations. Some families manage small house-based stalls for selling daily necessary items and some Khmers work as mobile traders, traveling with their goods from house to house using bicycles, motorbikes and carts. In addition, Khmer also collect herbal medicine ingredients from the forested mountain slopes and sell them to plains-based wholesalers as well as to local stallholders (Taylor, 2014b, pp. 168-183).
In addition, locally available materials are used to make handicraft products to meet the needs and requirements of the community. Until now, pottery-making, weaving and Palmyra sugar-making are processed by applying production techniques from previous generations. Trading and business activities in this mountainous region are mainly dominated by Hoa or to some extent by Vietnamese. However, Khmers are also involved in some trading and commodity exchange of their crops, domestic animals and handicraft products and exploited natural resources in the local markets. In addition, they also have long-term trading interactions with Cambodians across border gates. In other words, Khmer people in An Giang Province have successfully integrated themselves into the market economy to ensure stability in the household economy and contribute in part towards local socioeconomic development (Vo Cong Nguyen, 2008, pp. 101-114)
In recent years, many young Khmers have proven their capacity in official education and more Khmers intellectuals are now present in state economic sectors at provincial, district
and communal levels. However, the number of Khmer staff in the state sector is very limited in comparison to Vietnamese. During the last few years, I observed an increasing number of young Khmers migrating to the Kinh-dominated city not only in search of education but also jobs. More young Khmer intellectuals are present in the state division but many of these migrants work in enterprises or factories.
Similar to Khmers, a large population of Kinh in An Giang reside in rural areas and work in farming: growing rice and various types of crops, animal raising and poultry husbandry. In addition, in recent years, many farmers have also invested in fish culturing, mainly catfish. Besides Hoa, Kinh people are also dominant in trading in both wholesale and retail markets. Lower-skilled workers are concentrated in manual work such as construction, transport and service industries and factory work. In contrast to Khmer people’s limited presence in official and state occupations, Kinh are dominant in state and official sectors, and even in the mountainside region of Khmer people, Kinh dominate the offices of administration. The disparity of their involvement in economic sectors can be seen in the following table (See Table 3.1):
Table 3.1 Percentage of working population of Kinh and Khmer groups by economic sectors, 2009
Economic sector Kinh Khmer
Self-employed 3.5 3.8
Household enterprises 74.6 85.8
Cooperative/collective 0.3 0.1
Private enterprises 7.3 5.0
State 10.5 2.8
Foreign invested enterprises 3.8 2.5
Source: UNFPA, 2011
We can see from Table 3.1 that the Khmer ethnic group mostly work in the household enterprises sector. The percentage of Khmer minority people’s participation in private enterprises, and state and foreign invested enterprises is much lower compared to the Kinh
ethnic group. Such difference can be explained by the disparity in educational level. Because of the low educational level and low technical qualification, the participation of Khmer people in economic activities is also limited. In addition, language barrier may also hinder their access to this sector.
Economic status disparities
As a result of the difference in educational level and occupation, the economic gap between Kinh and Khmer ethnic groups is also significant. Along with other ethnic minorities such as the Hmong and central Highlanders, the Khmers have been identified as over- represented among Vietnam’s poor. Development reports continue to declare the Khmers as poor, uneducated, remote, backward and in need of development—further consolidating the sense of difference. The economic gap between Kinh and Khmer ethnic groups is recorded in the UNFPA report (see Table 3.2)
Table 3.2 The percentage distribution of population of Kinh and Khmer ethnic groups by socioeconomic condition, 2009
Ethnic group Poorest Poor Average Rich Richest
Entire country 15.3 17.6 20.3 21.7 25.2 Kinh 8.9 16.7 21.9 24.3 28.2 Khmer 40.5 28.5 16.3 10.7 4.0 Source: UNFPA, 2011
It can be seen from Table 3.2 that most Khmer people are in the poor and poorest groups: 69 percent of their population. In contrast, 52.5 percent of the Kinh population is in the rich and richest groups. The reasons for the poverty of the Khmer people are popularly attributed to their geographical and cultural ‘remoteness’ as well as their religious orientation (Taylor, 2007, p. 9). The reasons for Khmer poverty have been officially and internationally analyzed to be rooted in the Khmers’ characteristics as uneducated, incapable, and inferior and of lower status. Ironically, positive official assistance to support and uplift the Khmers in various poverty alleviation projects consolidated among Kinh a
sense that the Khmers were incompetent, uneducated, incapable of self-help and thus needing special government assistance (Taylor, 2014a, pp. 77-79).