The pagoda school was the main unit of the traditional educational system in Laos. Efforts toward modernization came in the wake of the country’s becoming a French protectorate in 1893 and finally after its inclusion in 1904 within the French Indochina Union. The medium of education was changed to French when the French Education Service was created.

During the colonial period, the French established a secular education system patterned after schools in France, and French was the language of instruction after the second or third grade. This system was largely irrelevant to the needs and life-styles of the vast majority of the rural population, despite its extension to some district centers and a few villages. However, it did produce a small elite drawn primarily from the royal family and noble households. Many children of Vietnamese immigrants to Laos–who made up the majority of the colonial civil service–also attended these schools and, in fact, constituted a significant proportion of the students at secondary levels in urban centers. Post-secondary education was not available in Laos, and the few advanced students traveled to Hanoi, Danang, and Hué in Vietnam and to Phnom Penh in Cambodia for specialized training; fewer still continued with university-level studies in France.

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