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EDUCATION

(i) Introduction

As stated in the National Strategic Development Plan 2006-2010: “Education is a crucial factor in human development and closely contributes, in a myriad of ways to poverty reduction, including by providing scope for better awareness to avail of opportunities for economic progress.” As such the RGC’s long term goals are to provide nine years of quality basic education for all by 2010 and to achieve Education for All (EFA) by 2015.

The NGO community recognizes that the achievements of the education sector within the RGC this past year have been many and will be long-lasting.  Some of the most notable are:

w SWAp Review Meeting in June 2005 gathering Ministry officials, donors, lenders, NGOs  and stakeholders to share a vision and steps

   to achieve it;

w the completion of the ESP/ESSP 2006-2010 in a collaborative process;

w the production of the National Strategic Development Plan;

w the on-going bi-monthly Ministry/Donor/NGO meetings for direction and decision-making;

w the on-going collaboration of NGOs and the RGC in implementing the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, the work for disabled, and

   vulnerable children;

w the relatively high level of disbursement of Priority Action Program (PAP) 2005 and the Public Expenditure Tracking Survey which

   indication that the money does get to the schools;

w the new projects within the donor and NGO communities for education, e.g. USAID, World Bank, ADB, EC;

w good evaluations available on which to build future work;

w the new admissions process for mixed merit and need-based scholarships to higher education institutions;

w better understanding of and wider implementation of Child-Friendly School principles; and

w progress on the Fast-Track Initiative.

w NGOs are involved in every aspect of education—from higher education to early childhood, formal basic and secondary, informal,

   non-formal, special education, teacher training  and work around issues of gender, children’s rights and HIV/AIDS. A review of NGO

   engagement is available through the office of the NGO Educational Partnership. (nep@online.com.kh)

   (ii) Key Issues

Access and Inclusion

There are disagreements around the data on primary enrollment from which conclusions can be drawn, but in general, enrollment is up: Net enrollment: 2005 EMIS 90.1%, 2005 Household Survey World Bank 79.1.  The Education Management Information System (EMIS) data also shows that there are about 180,000 geographically “hard-to-reach” primary school age children (60% of whom are girls) who have no access to primary education.  Conversely in cities, there is anecdotal evidence that the schools are there, but the informal tuition fees make the cost of education, for the poorest of city residents, too high.  In both city and rural areas, less than one-half of the children entering primary school complete the six-year cycle. Additionally, the issue of late school entry and the lack of Early Child Development services, is a significant factor in school completion rates especially for poor and otherwise disadvantaged children.

Secondary enrollment rates during 2005 have improved, however with a 25% Net Enrolment Rate (NER) for secondary school, Cambodia is among the lowest in the region.  We need to ask what the reasons are for the low enrolment rate, as well as the continuing high repetition and dropout rates and address those causes from both the supply and demand sides. One supply side issue is the need for more lower-secondary school services in remote areas.

Finance

The PAP continues to be a mechanism that has some success when the money is disbursed, but because it is late and often less than promised, it does not help schools and departments to plan and implement programs with any regularity.  As of 31 December, 2005 the disbursement rate for the year was 57.98%.  The same can be said for allocation of the total education budget.  The EFA-Fast-Track Initiative indicative framework requires Government spending on education to be at least 20% of total budget—the new budget for 2006 estimates 18% and in the last five years, the RGC has not delivered on its budget commitments in any of the social sectors including education.

Vocational and Non-Formal Education

Given the fact that less than half of Cambodian children now complete primary school, the importance of vocational education and associated literacy programs cannot be over-estimated.  While children in Cambodia become literate by the middle of grade three, the majority drop out, some just at that point.  Poverty is directly linked to a lack of competency in literacy and numeracy, and Cambodia’s poor are doomed to remain poor without flexible programs that address the needs of the large number of out-of-school children.

   (iii)    Recommendations

The following priorities have been identified by NGOs working in education:

1. NGOs strongly support the National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP), which identifies the “continuing and persistent problems in regard to adequacy and timeliness in release of budgetary allocations,” (NSDP p.22) as critical to achieving stated government policies.  NGOs reiterate the need for a higher level of allocation and distribution of funding to ensure that teachers are adequately paid for their work and that the educational reforms outlined in the ESP and ESSP can be implemented. The unplanned and competing priorities in the Ministry of Economy and Finance results in the irregular 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. 

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[1]. 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 associated with with female teachers being away from their families and unacceptable, lengthy delays in receiving salaries and incentives.

3.  Corruption at all levels is hampering the reform process. Schemes, in a number of areas, to obtain illegal payments for manipulating the deployment and promotion of teachers are still a serious concern. The gap the published national policy and the reality in schools and institutions continues to compromise the quality of education for Cambodian children. This discrepancy results in unofficial payments to teachers, charges for additional lessons that students are pressured to attend, payments for jobs and for 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 in as much as 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, that are paid on a regular basis.

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 with targets for implementation.

5.  Models of good practice have been highlighted in the first section of the report. There is a growing body of evidence, being developed by some educationalists at the grassroots offering effective strategies for school management and better quality teaching and learning. Drawing on the good work being done by many NGO’s working the area of education, the MoEYS could develop teachers guides for the 4 main subject areas in primary schools, which would result in improved teacher effectiveness.These tyoes of 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.  

6.  The NPRS highlights 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% free students

As NGOs, working in the education sector in Cambodia, we see ourselves operating in partnership with the RGC 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.

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