A/HRC/41/39/Add.2 children in the richest quintile.38 Children living in poverty can be kept out of school owing to the cost and the need to work to support their families. 51. Rural areas have much more limited access to education. Although most villages have a primary school, 57 per cent of primary schools do not offer all five grades, and many villages have no secondary school. Children very often must travel far from home to attend secondary school or even to finish primary school. 39 The Government should explore creative transportation options and the provision of safe and adequate accommodation for students, in order to broaden genuine access to education in rural areas. 52. The quality of education is also problematically low. The World Bank estimates that 10.8 years of Lao education equals just 6.4 quality-adjusted years. In one study, almost a third of second-grade students scored zero in reading fluency and 57 per cent scored zero in reading comprehension.40 53. Education spending should be increased in line with regional standards, and the Government should assess why its current approach yields such poor outcomes. Money for salaries is important, but it is also needed for operational expenses, teaching materials, teacher training and school infrastructure. According to the World Bank, around half of schools have a roof that leaks and less than half have toilets.41 54. The country has, in principle, adopted inclusive education, and 5,075 children with disabilities are enrolled in mainstream schools. 42 That number is very low, however, compared with the number of those who should be benefiting from such programmes. The Government and its international partners should draw up a realistic assessment of the number and needs of students with disabilities countrywide and develop appropriate programmes to significantly expand enrolment. V. Challenges and opportunities A. Unexploded ordnance 55. The widespread presence of unexploded ordnance is an ongoing driver of poverty, as rightly recognized by the adoption by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic of its own national sustainable development goal on reducing the impact of unexploded ordnance. According to the organization Legacies of War, between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance over the country in 580,000 bombing missions. Some 80 million cluster bomblets failed to explode, leading to an estimated 50,000 civilians killed or maimed since 1964. Surveys and strike data indicate that a third of the country is still contaminated with unexploded ordnance,43 therefore farmers cannot use agricultural land to feed their families without risking death or injury. Explosions can cause disabilities that prevent people from working and, because of limited social support, may require intensive care from family members, keeping additional family members out of work. 56. Development partners, in particular the United States, should be doing much more to rapidly clear unexploded ordnance and provide support for those affected. According to one estimate, just 1 per cent of unexploded bomblets have been cleared to date. 44 By the same token, the problem should not be used to distract attention from the many shortcomings of government anti-poverty policies. 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Statistics Bureau, “Lao Social Indicator Survey II”, p. 45. World Bank, “Lao PDR Economic Monitor”, January 2019, p. 53. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 47. Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Ministry of Education and Sports, Education and Sports Sector Performance Annual Report 2017–2018 and Development Plan for 2018–2019 (August 2018), p. 51. Legacies of War, “Cluster bomb facts”, fact sheet, 26 July 2013. Available from http://legaciesofwar.org/resources/cluster-bomb-fact-sheet/. Ibid. 13