In the early years of the 21st century the Vietnamese education system continues to face many challenges, including poor infrastructure, lack of equipment and teaching materials, low wages precipitating an acute shortage of skilled teachers and academic staff, and a relatively poor linkage of higher education with research, production and employment. However, against a background of such overwhelming difficulty the achievements of the last half century have been impressive. Official figures currently put Viet Nam's literacy rate at between 78 and 84 per cent, with 97 per cent of school-age children at school, 99 per cent of 6-year-olds in first grade, 90 per cent of 11-year-olds graduating from primary school and 98.5 per cent of children aged 14 completing junior secondary education. A pioneering new bilingual primary education programme implemented in selected mountainous regions to create greater opportunities for ethnic minority children has been hailed as a model of educational reform in the region and is currently being considered by other countries such as Thailand, India, Laos, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. Since the early 1990s too, the quality of university graduates has improved significantly and the reputation