Ethnic minority groups usually have lower educational achievement than ethnic majority groups in both developed and developing countries. However, there is a paucity of empirical research into the causes ofthis disparity for developing countries. This paper finds that more than 85% of the difference of predicted years of schooling between the ethnic majority group and the ethnic minority groups in Vietnam can be attributed to disparities in observed household, school and community characteristics. A sample of rural people aged 14 to 25 from the 1997- 1998 Vietnam Living Standards Survey is used for analysis, and the problem of right-censoring is addressed with a censored ordered probit econometric model