HANOI, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- The number of dropout students in Vietnam has sharply increased nationwide to one million over the last six years, the highest in the Southeast Asia, Vietnam News reported on Thursday, citing the source with the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

    The Philippines, with 648,000 dropouts, was the second in the region, followed by Myanmar with 487,000, Thailand with 419,000 and Indonesia with 414,000, said the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2008, recently released by UNESCO in Hanoi.

    According to the report, Vietnam is ranked 79th among 129 countries in the region, based on the Education for All Development Index (EDI).

    The EDI is based on four EFA goals including universal primary education, adult literacy, quality of education and gender parity.

    Vietnam and three other countries in the region namely Brunei, Myanmar and the Philippines will not achieve 100 percent adult literacy by 2015, said the report.

    Vietnam will give priority to increasing the national budget for education development, and improving the quality of education in rural and ethnic minority areas, frontier regions and outlying islands, said Nguyen Minh Hien, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Education and Training.