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Good practice Imported

Lao PDR's Ethics-Guided National AI Literacy & TVET Instructor Programme

Laos · Vientiane · See the Laos profile · See the Vientiane profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 28% 60/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Guided by UNESCO's AI Readiness Assessment, Lao PDR's Ministry of Education and Sports and UNESCO issued national ICT-AI Competency Standards for Teachers and report training 6,200 TVET instructors, alongside AI-literacy outreach for schools, civil servants and journalists.

6,200
TVET instructors trained in AI tools
620,000
Potential student reach
~5%
Primary schools with internet access
64%
National internet penetration (2023) (2023)
39%
National internet penetration (2019) (2019)
Lao PDR's Ethics-Guided National AI Literacy & TVET Instructor Programme

Details

Promoter
UNESCO (CapED Programme) & Ministry of Education and Sports, Lao PDR
Period
2025–2026
Keywords
education, TVET, teacher training, AI governance, AI ethics

Context

In 2025, Lao PDR completed UNESCO's AI Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) country report, launched in January 2025, to guide a national AI strategy under development. On the education side, UNESCO's CapED Programme -- active in the country since 2009 -- has worked with the Ministry of Education and Sports on ethics-guided AI literacy and instructor training.

Objectives

The programme sought to build national AI-readiness in education by defining teacher competency standards, training TVET instructors in AI tools, and extending AI-literacy and online-safety outreach to civil servants, journalists and school communities, with explicit equity provisions for rural youth and women.

Activities

The Ministry of Education and Sports and UNESCO's CapED Programme published national ICT-AI Competency Standards for Teachers in December 2025. UNESCO reported training 6,200 TVET instructors in AI tools, alongside UNICEF-run online-safety and ethical-AI guidance for schools, AI-literacy sessions for civil servants and journalists, and development of a Lao-language AI primer.

Results

The UN Resident Coordinator's office in Lao PDR stated the instructor training carried a potential reach of 620,000 students, though this figure is explicitly described by its source as 'potential' rather than measured, and the training figure itself has not been independently corroborated beyond the UN's own statement.

Conclusions

Structural constraints temper near-term impact: only about 5% of Lao primary schools have internet access, and national internet penetration was 64% in 2023 (up from 39% in 2019), meaning the national AI-literacy ambition currently runs well ahead of the country's digital infrastructure.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
UNESCO CapED Programme, Ministry of Education and Sports, Lao PDR, UNICEF (online-safety/ethical-AI guidance), UN Resident Coordinator's Office

Conditions for success

  • Anchored in UNESCO's AI Readiness Assessment Methodology to align policy with capacity building
  • Explicit equity provisions (scholarships, mentorship for rural youth and women)
  • Development of a Lao-language AI primer to lower the language barrier to adoption

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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