Education
In his
presentation to the education forum in May 2003, the late Excellency Tol Lah set
out his clear vision:
When
I reflect on what I saw as the main priorities for reform in 1994, I realise
that many of the fundamental issues for effective education reform remain
unchanged. Firstly, it remains critical to continue to focus on a limited number
of key policy priorities and programs which will drive the reform process.
Secondly, we must continue to provide a clear framework for coordinating the
resources of the sector from Government and donor partners. Thirdly, and most
importantly, we must sustain the culture of change within the education system
through transmitting goals to all stakeholders, especially teachers and parents.
NGOs
working in the education sector recognize the considerable progress that has
been made over the last ten years and reiterate their commitment to supporting
and collaborating with the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport (MoEYS) and the
Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC). They note and affirm the following
achievements:
The production of policy documents and planning processes such as the National Poverty Reduction Strategy (NPRS), the Education Strategic Plan (ESP), the Education Sector Support Program (ESSP), and Education for All (EFA).
The Priority Action Program (PAP) process of setting published targets for the disbursement of funds. Whilst the implementation of PAPs has been far from perfect, the system has delivered increased resources to schools and institutions.
Enhanced co-operation between the Ministry, donors and NGOs.
The collaboration between the MoEYS and NGOs in implementing the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction Program on Girls' Scholarships.
The increase in absolute enrolments in all sectors.
The number of schools that have been constructed, particularly in remote areas and the increasing provision for wells, latrines and access for children with disabilities.
The draft proposal for Curriculum Development which emphasizes a coherent structure, efficient use of resources and flexibility at local level.
The draft Education Law which guarantees institutional status, autonomy, good governance, quality assurance and partnership.
The improved procedures for security in setting and marking the Grade 12 examinations.
The increasing engagement of young graduates and their impact on the reform process at local and national level.
The
MoEYS and NGOs now have evidence that teachers and school directors are willing
to take on new ideas, use and develop new resources and provide for interactive
learning when they receive devolved funding and have regular, well-informed
guidance and feedback at the local level. Programs such as the MoEYS' Education
Quality Improvement Project (EQIP) and Child Friendly and Gender Sensitive
Schools Project, (supported by UNICEF/KAPE) present good models of efficient and
accountable management, greater community involvement, gender equity, supportive
supervision and training and better communication, resulting in quality
improvement in school and classroom environments and more purposeful teaching
and learning.
Review of Key Issues in the 2002 Consultative
Group Statement on Education
While
recognizing the progress that has been made, the NGO community has concerns
about the key issues that remain. In general, issues raised in 2001 and 2002
have shown only marginal improvement or have not been resolved:
Access
and inclusion:
Figures
for enrolment for 2003 indicate improvement over 2001. In 2002–2003, 89
percent of primary aged students (an increase of 3 percent) and 19 percent of
secondary school students (an increase of 2 percent) were enrolled in school11.
However, repetition rates in Grades 1 and 2 remain high, and dropout and
repetition rates in both primary and secondary schools continue to cause
concern. Related statistics such as population changes and stay-in-school
figures need updating as well as information about numbers who complete school
years for which they are enrolled.
Girls
continue to represent 47 percent of the enrolment in Grade 1. Figures drop to 41
percent of enrolment in lower secondary school and 33 percent in upper secondary
school[1].
There is a big decrease in girls' participation between Grade 6 and 7. In
primary schools, female teachers represent 40 percent of the work force,
declining to 22 percent in upper secondary and below 20 percent in
post-secondary levels[2].
There continues to be a need to focus on proactive strategies in both demand and
supply to ensure equitable access for disadvantaged groups such as females, the
disabled and ethnic minorities.
Finance:
The
government commitment of 18.2 percent of the national recurrent budget in 2002
and the promised increase to 20 percent in 2005 is highly commended. However,
the problems of revenue collection and the low level and late disbursement of
funds continue to undermine the progress of educational reform. To date, only 95
percent of PAP funding for 2003 has been disbursed, and none has been disbursed
for 2004 with only two months to go in the year. This failure of the Executive to honor the Budget approved by
the Legislature raises serious questions regarding on-going issues of
transparency and financial accountability. Despite assertions to the contrary,
NGOs have considerable evidence from the field that unofficial payments to
schools and teachers continue unabated, so disadvantaging poor families who are
unable to pay the fees.
Non-formal
education and vocational training:
The
low education enrolment and achievement of the children of the poor of today
suggests that poverty will be passed along from this generation to the next[3].
The
problem persists that the learning needs of a significant percentage of children
and youth have not been met through the formal system, which brings into
question Cambodia’s ability to compete in global markets.
Poverty
rates are higher for households in which the head of the household has had
either no formal education or only some primary schooling. In rural areas, the
poorest quintile has a net primary school enrolment rate of 50 percent,
significantly below the 75 percent in the richest quintile. Less than 5 percent
of rural children aged 12–14 in the poorest quintile are enrolled in lower
secondary schools as compared to 25 percent in the richest quintile4.
Children from the poorest quintile are extremely under-represented in upper
secondary schools and in tertiary education.
The
inadequacies in the provision of non-formal education and vocational training
continue to cause concern. The Asian Development Bank Poverty Analysis 2003
states:
“Current education sector
policy focuses little on adult basic education and literacy (ABEL) This is
surprising, given the preponderance of adults (particularly females) with little
or no education in the labor force and the significant poverty reduction impact
in the short and medium term from ABEL. It is also surprising given the urgent
need for adult education in substantive areas such as health, gender
sensitivity, agricultural practices and entrepreneurial skills.”
Key Issues and Recommendations in 2004:
The
following priorities have been identified by NGOs working in education:
1.
NGOs strongly support the NPRS, which identifies the stalled Public
Administration Reform as critical to the capacity to achieve government
policies. NGOs reiterate the need for a higher level of allocation and
distribution of funding to ensure that teachers are adequately remunerated for
their work and that planned educational reform can be implemented. The unplanned
and competing priorities in the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) results in
the intermittent release of funding to the MoEYS. Unless these problems can be
efficiently resolved, it is difficult to justify the current shift towards
direct budgetary support.
Recommendations:
·
Ensure that the MEF
concentrates on its role of financial planning and that the MOEYS is allowed
to take responsibility for the administration of the sector budget.
·
Ensure transparency,
predictability and accountability in the allocation and disbursement of
funding. Utilize the developing banking system for the transfer of cash to
local level.
·
Ensure that funding mechanisms
and levels are clear so that informed judgments can be made regarding
performance against benchmark indicators.
·
Reform PAP funding so that it
drives the system rather than perpetuating previous difficulties.
·
Agree a glossary of financial
management terms to clarify the operational meaning of terms such as budget,
allocation, commitment, mandate, disbursement, expenditure, financial year
limits etc.
·
Link teachers’ salaries to
the cost of living and ensure that there is a clear plan to increase
teachers’ salaries to represent a living wage over the medium term. Develop
effective and efficient human resource systems so that education staff are
rewarded for additional duties and effective performance.
·
Provide clear guidelines and
adequately fund effective training, follow-up support and supervision to
ensure that schools and clusters can plan effectively for school improvement
(instead of rushing to expend a windfall delivery before the reporting period
has expired).
·
Continue to improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of textbook distribution to ensure targets in the
ESSP are met.
2.
There are serious teacher
shortages, particularly in remote areas which results in high primary school
pupil/teacher ratios; for example 80:1 in Siem Reap, 77:1 in Koh Kong, 73:1 in
Pailin, 69:1 in Kampong Speu[4].
Large classes undermine the push towards quality improvement. Redeployment
strategies are not working effectively due to inadequate incentives, lack of
housing or rental allowances for high costs areas, cultural issues connected
with female teachers being away from their families and unacceptable, lengthy
delays in receiving salaries and incentives.
Recommendations:
·
Ensure wider use of locally
residing contract teachers; provide them with opportunities for training and
upgrading so they have some prospect of entering the teaching service, and pay
salaries and allowances on time.
·
Lower the entry point to
pre-service training for local students to the end of Grade 9 for districts
where there is no upper secondary school.
3.
Corruption at all levels
is hampering the reform process. Recent, well publicized schemes in a number of
areas to obtain illegal payments for manipulating the deployment and promotion
of teachers are a serious concern. There is a gap between the published national
policy and the reality in schools and institutions. This dichotomy results in
unofficial payments to teachers, charges for additional lessons that students
are pressured to attend, payments for jobs, places in university and exam passes
etc. These informal costs adversely affect individuals' access to education and
particularly discriminate against the poor. Unofficial payments also jeopardize
relationships between school staff and the community so that those staff who
wish to act professionally and therefore with the greatest potential to
implement reform, are the ones most likely to leave the education sector.
Achieving quality improvement and eliminating unofficial fees is not possible
without realistic teachers' salaries.
Recommendations:
·
Regulate and thereby utilize
unofficial payments so that they can be effectively and transparently
redeployed to provide services to vulnerable children and to pay teachers.
·
Review teachers’ salary
improvement projections with the prospect of providing an acceptable level of
payment in the medium term (see 1. above)
4.
The production of national
ESP, ESSP, EFA and NPRS has been commended in the first section of the report.
However there is now a proliferation of plans, goals and documents and a large
number of monitoring activities set up to follow these processes which appear to
cover the same ground. These need to be prioritized into concrete and realistic
action plans.
Recommendation:
·
Harmonize, integrate and
prioritize the various plans and fund them adequately (expenditure rather than
allocation only) so that there is consistency in goal setting and implementing
educational priorities and strategies.
·
Coordinate and rationalize the
monitoring processes
5.
Models of good practice
have been highlighted in the first section of the report. There is a growing
body of evidence that some educationalists at the grassroots are developing
effective strategies for school management and better quality teaching and
learning. These initiatives are sometimes undermined by a lack of understanding
on the part of officials at divisional, provincial and national level of
successful school improvement procedures. Decision makers at all levels should
be selected on the basis of technical competence rather than on seniority or
preserving existing practice.
Recommendation:
·
Ensure that officials at all
levels are aware of current initiatives, that they have experience of
observing best practice and are willing to constructively support improvement
strategies through positive encouragement.
·
Select the best school and
classroom practitioners for decision making posts in schools and the system in
general.
6. The NPRS highlights once again the need for a high quality tertiary sector, both to improve the weak teaching capacity throughout the sector and to spearhead the development process in Cambodia. Increased access through proliferating, unregulated private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is not the answer. Students/parents pay hard-won tuition fees for unclear quality and value, and public HEIs remain unsupported by government and are required to accept 50 percent free students
Recommendations:
· Clarify the respective roles of the MoEYS/Dept of Higher Education and the newly created Accreditation Committee of Cambodia regarding the Royal Kret of March 2002.
· Government/Donors/NGOs should work in collaboration to address key quality and regulatory issues as well as create long-term policy on scholarships, institutional autonomy, merit-based salaries, research, etc
As NGOs
working in education in Cambodia, we see ourselves working in partnership with
the Royal Government of Cambodia and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport
to address these recommendations; they are offered in a spirit of partnership
and with our willingness to work together for the good of the children of
Cambodia.
For further information on the issues raised in this paper, please contact:
The NGO Education Partnership (NEP), Tel: 023 987 114, NEP@online.com.kh,
or EDUCAM, mkskhmer@online.com.kh
NEP
Board of Directors:
Thoin
Sean Lay
seanlay@oxfam.org.kh
Kong
Sonthara
kong.sonthara@care-cambodia.org
Chea
Vantha
chea.Vantha@vsoint.org
Kurt
Bredenberg kape.cambodia@online.com.kh
Regina
Pellicore mkskhmer@online.com.kh
EDUCAM: Dr. Luise Ahrens mkskhmer@online.com.kh
[1]EMIS
- Education Statistics and Indicators 2002-2003
[2]Gender
appraisal of ESSP 2002/2003 Performance, May 2003
[3]National
Poverty Reduction Strategy 2003-2005