Teaching Staff

A key component of improved resource management is effective deployment of the education service, especially primary and secondary school teachers. Currently, there are some 45,000 primary school teachers and around 17,500 secondary school teachers. In addition, there are about 10,000 non-teaching staff in schools. These are supplemented by some 3,100 education staff in provincial and district education offices.

At present, teacher education provision consists of 18 primary education teacher-training colleges (PTTCs), six regional teacher-training colleges (RTTCs), which train Grades VII–IX teachers (both offering a two-year programme), and a one-year post-graduate programme at the Faculty of Pedagogy training upper secondary school teachers. Admission is increasingly based on completion of Grade XII (in the past there was some discretion on Grade IX completion as an admission credential). The enrolment is about 5,900 at PTTCs, 2,250 at RTTCs and 400 at the Faculty of Pedagogy. PTTCs and RTTCs have an annual graduate output of around 2,950 and 1,000 students, respectively. The students-teacher ratios are on average 17:1 and 12:1 in PTTCs and RTTCs, respectively. The Faculty has an output of around 400 students per year. In addition, the majority of primary school teachers have had access to a nationwide, distance learning, in-service programme, financed with donor support over the 1995–2000 period.

Progression rates in the teacher-training colleges are high. Combined repetition and dropout rates is reasonably low, averaging around 4% in 1999. Student performance assessment is generally well regulated and students have opportunities to re-sit examinations.

One concern is the highly academic nature of the teacher-training curriculum. A large proportion of time is spent on academic upgrading as opposed to teaching methodology and in-school teaching practice. The recent location of a model primary school close to the colleges is reported to be an improvement. Nevertheless, the opportunity to increase the methodology component, as academic entry requirements have been raised, has not been fully grasped. The average number of instructional periods per week is set at 32 core periods plus six extension periods, which is considerably higher than many secondary schools.

The current curriculum and output from the PTTCs and RTTCs is not particularly responsive to emerging requirements. The PTTC programme does not include training opportunities for teaching or managing multigrade or ethnic minority classes. The RTTC and Faculty of Pedagogy programmes perceive their mission as the training of single subject specialists, which undermines more flexible deployment of staff, especially in secondary schools. The tradition of graduate teachers being trained for teaching only upper secondary classes also undermines the efficient deployment of newly trained teachers. The provision for the training of teachers of more practical subjects (i.e. foreign languages, industrial arts, art and craft, science) is rudimentary or non-existent.

The Ministry of Education (MEYS) has a set of staffing guidelines for schools, which in principle form the basis for staff deployment. A survey (November 1999) indicated that these guidelines are not being used effectively to deploy staff. For example, using the MEYS norms, there is a shortage of around 12,000 primary school teachers and 4,500 non-teaching staff. In contrast, there is an excess of around 3,400 lower secondary school teachers and 170 upper secondary school teachers. There is also an excess of around 2,100 non-teaching staff in secondary schools.

Efficient staff deployment, especially in secondary schools, is constrained by subject specialization and variable teaching loads. The broad MEYS guideline is teacher workload of 18–20 hours per week. A 1999 survey indicated that the average workload for lower secondary teachers (Grades VII–IX schools) was only 14 hours per week. In upper secondary schools (Grades X–XII), the figure was 13.8 hours. In contrast, the workload in consolidated schools (Grades VII–XII) increased to 17.7 hours per week. Clearly, the larger schools provide greater opportunities for economies of scale and more efficient use of teachers for their specialist subjects. A key policy issue is therefore to set agreed standards for teacher workloads and ensure their enforcement.

The survey also showed significant variation in the matching of staff deployment with their specialist subjects. For example, if a teacher of Khmer taught only Khmer classes, the matching rate would be 100%. In other words, the match is a measure of efficient internal specialist staff deployment. There was substantial variation by subject with the lowest matching rates of 5-20% in the vocational subjects. Foreign languages have comparatively low matching rates at around 30% in lower secondary, rising to around 45% in upper secondary education. The core subjects (e.g. mathematics, Khmer language, sciences) generally had matching rates of around 85–95%. A key measure will therefore be to ensure that secondary teacher training produces multi-subject specialists rather than single subject specialists in order to optimise use of such staff.

The proposed primary and secondary education expansion over the next 5–10 years provides some impetus for more efficient staff deployment. Based on current enrolment growth scenarios, the total staff requirement will grow from around 73,000 school-based staff to around 103,000 by 2005. Clearly, this will put significant pressure on education budgets. A first option should therefore optimise redeployment of non-teaching staff back to the classroom over the 2001–2005 period.

The proposals for rationalization of provincial or district education administrations and teaching/non-teaching staff need to take account of other considerations, especially the potential impact of greater decentralization of education service management. For example, the proposed enhanced monitoring role for provinces and districts will have to be taken into account (e.g. use of schools' inspectors).

There is a growing support for increased delegation of education personnel management to district education authorities in order to allow adaptation on a case-by-case basis. The role of the central administration should be to set effective staff deployment guidelines against agreed levels of service provision, leaving it to lower levels of the system to implement them accordingly. It needs to be recognized that if personnel management functions are delegated downwards, urgent capacity building in these functions will be needed, including appropriate staff deployment, personnel information systems and relevant training.

The salary scales and career progressions are comparatively compressed towards the lower end of the scale, with large numbers of non-graduate primary school teachers. Currently, there is only a very limited career path and promotion prospects. For example, school directors are not paid additional responsibility allowances for management responsibilities. In addition, there are only limited and insufficient incentives for posting qualified teachers to work in remote areas and schools in difficult circumstances.

The MEYS strategy is to gradually grant a higher degree of operational autonomy to the PTTCs and RTTCs. As part of this programme, there is currently donor support for PTTC and RTTC operational budget provision and management by institutional heads. The central Teacher-Training Department (TTD) has been active in formulating a forward-looking teacher education strategic plan and programme for 2001-2005. The overall direction of the programme is responsive to the requirements of primary and secondary education expansion. However, the limitations of the plan are illustrative of a number of difficulties in coordinating teacher supply/demand planning and staff deployment. The current supply/demand planning arrangements are best characterized as highly centralized, making it difficult for provincial authorities and training colleges to be more responsive to local circumstances.

Another strategy for improving the responsiveness to local circumstances and changing demands of the education system is to make use of PTTCs, RTTCs and the Faculty of Pedagogy for in-service training, especially during the vacation period. Up until the mid/late 1990s, RTTCs were used for this purpose, including for foreign language training. Currently, the in-service provision is focused on orientation programmes for the new textbooks and curriculum. Nevertheless, there is significant scope for expansion of a well-planned and resourced in-service programme, even using local secondary schools as a strategy for responding quickly and efficiently to changing education service demands.

In order to achieve the proposed enrolment growth, a critical requirement is to increase the number of trained teachers at all levels. Taking into account attrition rates and additional posts needed, it is projected that by 2005 an additional 11,500 trained primary school teachers will be needed. For lower and upper secondary education, the figures are 23,000 and 8,400 respectively.

The fundamental strategic priority for teacher education is therefore to strengthen teacher supply/demand planning, in consultation with central and provincial personnel departments. In the short term, some breathing space for additional trained teacher output can be achieved by massive redeployment of non-teaching staff back to the classroom. Key measures for meeting these teacher development demands will include: (i) a well-planned programme of the teacher qualified, non-teaching staff back to the classroom, possibly linked to very short refresher courses; (ii) increasing the capacity of the system to generate additional trained secondary school teachers; and (iii) reforming the current teacher-training college programmes to produce multi-skilled teachers that will help optimise flexible staff deployment within schools, especially across Grades VII–XII.

Some additional teacher development strategic options that are being considered by the Ministry include: (a) revising the PTTC curriculum in order to define a training programme for Grades I–IX teachers; (b) reducing the duration of in-college training programmes of RTTCs (and possibly PTTCs) from two years to one year, linked to a supervised school-based programme for the second year of training, (c) posting of new university graduates directly to secondary schools linked to a short pre-service orientation programme and in-school supervised teacher training; and (d) expansion of the staff and facilities in PTTCs, RTTCs and the Faculty of Pedagogy.

The strengths of options (a), (b) and (c) are that they will provide a quicker response to rapidly growing teacher requirements. The potential disadvantage, especially if the in-school component is not effectively managed, could be a decline in teacher performance. The advantage of option (d) is that the reforms would be minimal and less likely to meet resistance. The clear disadvantage of option (d) could be large increases in both recurrent and capital expenditure on teacher development, although there may be scope for using existing staff and facilities more efficiently.

Another strategic priority is to increase the planning and operational autonomy of teacher-training colleges and the Faculty of Pedagogy, taking account of the varying teacher requirements across the provinces. Key measures could include: (a) an annual planning exercise between headquarters, provincial education offices and teacher-training colleges to set targets and budget requirements; (b) the delegated management of operational budgets to teacher-training colleges, linked to appropriate guidelines; (c) capacity building for headquarters, provinces and institutional managers in technical and financial planning/management; and (d) granting authority to colleges to raise additional revenues through in-service programmes (e.g. refresher courses, multigrade courses, training multi-subject teachers), possibly on a competitive basis.