What it really takes to keep a child in school

As a new school year begins in Vietnam, almost 1,500 girls and boys from Grades 1 to 12 are heading back to class with scholarships and fee support from Blue Dragon. Another 235 young people are receiving scholarships to study at university or pursue vocational training.

From the handful of street kids Blue Dragon started helping more than 20 years ago, this is a wonderful achievement. But it’s only part of the story.

Paying school fees can remove one major barrier to education. For children growing up in difficult circumstances, though, staying in school takes much more.

A sudden family emergency can mean a child has to stay home. Violence or past trauma makes it difficult to concentrate in class. A parent losing their income can put school costs out of reach overnight. Even a distant crisis like the Iran war can push struggling families into an impossible choice between keeping their children in school and putting food on the table. 

That’s why Blue Dragon looks beyond the school fees to understand what each child and their family need to keep their education on track.

Supporting each child

Blue Dragon social workers call and visit children and families to understand how they are coping and whether anything has changed at home. Regular contact like this can make a huge difference.

Sometimes a child needs psychological counselling to recover from traumatic experiences such as trafficking and exploitation. Their family may need practical support, including financial assistance, to get through an emergency. In other cases, a home visit might reveal that a parent is sick, a sibling needs care or the household has suddenly lost its income.

Responding early can prevent a temporary crisis from becoming the reason a child leaves school altogether. The goal is not simply to get children into a classroom. It is to make sure they have the stability, care and confidence they need to keep learning and build the future they want.

Working with families and schools

Children don’t complete their education in isolation. What happens at home, in their community and at school can all affect whether they stay in class. That’s why Blue Dragon partners with schools serving disadvantaged communities in both isolated rural areas and major cities.

Blue Dragon works with teachers and school leaders to identify the barriers their students are facing and what kind of support would make the biggest difference. That can mean repairing toilets, building boarding rooms for children who live far from school or providing equipment for teachers. At other schools, the priority may be starting student clubs, providing free hygiene products for girls or setting up a toy library for families in the surrounding community. 

Just as importantly, Blue Dragon does not only focus on what a school is lacking. Every school and community already has strengths, knowledge and people committed to their children. Blue Dragon works with those strengths so that solutions can continue long after Blue Dragon steps away.

Bringing children back to class

One of the most effective ways to keep children in school is also one of the simplest. After major holiday periods, some children don’t return to class for a variety of reasons ranging from illness to financial struggles. 

Blue Dragon staff partner with school teachers to travel together and visit the homes of children who have not returned to class, often travelling across mountains and rivers to reach remote villages. The purpose of these visits is simple: sit down with the parents, understand why their child is out of school and find out what needs to change for them to return. 

These visits can be life-changing. Within one week of these visits, 65% of the children return to school. A year later, 95% are still there.

After Blue Dragon runs these campaigns alongside a school two or three times, teachers and school leaders continue organising the visits themselves without our support. The approach becomes part of how the school responds when a child disappears from class, making it a self-sustaining way to raise education levels across communities. 

Making schools safer

Keeping children in school also means making sure they are safe from exploitation. In Tuyen Quang province, Blue Dragon has partnered with the Department of Education to develop a curriculum on human trafficking and train teachers to use them in the classroom.

This curriculum is being taught in secondary schools across the province, helping children recognise the risks of human trafficking and exploitation and understand how to respond if they or someone they know may be in danger. We are now working with a second province to develop a similar approach.

These kinds of systemic changes take time. It starts with supporting one child through a difficult moment, then grows through families, teachers and schools to become part of the education system itself.

More than a scholarship

Almost 1,500 children returning to school with Blue Dragon support is something worth celebrating. This is in addition to the more than 8,000 children Blue Dragon has supported to return school or training over the past two decades.

Behind each child returning to school is a concerted effort. It is social workers checking in with children, psychologists helping them heal, families receiving support through difficult periods and teachers travelling to children’s homes. 

With Blue Dragon’s support, schools and education authorities are carrying these approaches forward themselves – making sure that when challenges arise, there are people, systems and communities ready to make sure that children can keep learning, growing and building the life they deserve.