Current Education Priorities and Concerns

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, establishing a radical agrarian society under which more than 1 million people died. In 1991, the warring Cambodian factions signed a United Nations sponsored peace agreement. UN-organized elections took place in 1993, following which a coalition government was formed. The country has made significant progress in the past decade in recovering from previous conflicts and disturbances. The 1980s and early 1990s are best characterized as a lengthy phase of emergency relief. Key features included the reopening of many primary schools, community-led rehabilitation of facilities, gradual curriculum reform and emergency deployment and training of the teaching service.

The early 1990s featured a growing emphasis on Government-led policy development, especially greater attention to basic needs provision and quality improvement through continued restoration of buildings, supply of textbooks, expanded teacher training and efforts to improve examinations. Key milestones included the Education for All Conference (1992) and the plan for Rebuilding Quality Education and Training (1994). Nevertheless, many of the legacies of previous disturbances, especially the destruction of social and human infrastructure remained evident. In addition, the Government capacity to effectively lead education policy development and donor/NGO consultative mechanisms remained underdeveloped.

The mid/late 1990s can be represented as the transition from emergency relief to reconstruction and development. The Government prepared the first Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP I) 1996-2000 that set out broad education development policies, strategies and targets. Around the same time, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) formulated the Education Investment Plan 1995-2000, which detailed priority strategies, programmes and investment requirements. The MEYS capability to lead, plan and manage these programmes, with substantial levels of international advisory support, was gradually put in place.

Notwithstanding significant education improvements, the overall education development approach suffered from a number of limitations. The long-term vision for education reform remained embryonic, linkage to broader poverty reduction strategies was limited and integration of education financing plans into public expenditure planning and management was under-developed. Education planning over this period also suffered from limited attention to broader stakeholder consultation and unclear priorities and sequencing. Other features included under-developed system monitoring mechanisms and insufficient analysis of the impact of out-of-school factors on student performance and attendance (e.g. pupils' health and nutrition and rural access roads). In summary, education programme design and appraisal processes paid insufficient attention to financial, social and institutional issues.

Since the early 1990s, Cambodia has made considerable progress in expanding basic education services. However, both quality and coverage still remain areas of great concern. There is a shortage of school buildings and learning centers, class sizes are often excessive, the number of actual instructional hours is inadequate, new curricula are not yet fully implemented, and there is a shortage of core and supplementary teaching materials. Teachers are often not qualified and are ill motivated due to low salaries and poor working conditions. The socio-economic and professional status of teachers are poor. There are few incentives such as scholarships, training opportunities, career development, and transfer or public recognition.

A recent sector performance review by the joint Government/donor social sector working group for education highlighted: (a) disappointing sector performance in achieving equitable access, quality improvement and efficiency targets, despite significant aid volumes; (b) poor financial performance, including under-resourcing of education by Government and inefficient salary/non-salary spending shares; (c) unstated policy priorities and processes, including inconsistency between spending patterns and stated policy priorities and targets; (d) under-developed regulatory mechanisms, especially for ensuring student/teacher attendance and for effective management of parental contributions; and (e) weak sector monitoring/evaluation systems, including limited attention to overall impact, lessons learned from projects and financial reporting.

The Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2001–2005 represents a key milestone in the work of the MEYS to effectively reform the education services in Cambodia. The ESP is guided by the Ministry's long-term vision of providing expanded and easily accessed, quality education training opportunities for all Cambodians. This long-term vision also includes increased authority to districts, schools and communities for planning and running education affairs, accompanied by steps that enhance a real feeling of mutual responsibility for ensuring high quality education provision at all levels of the system.

The ESP is emphatically pro-poor. The broad policy thrust is that the current education poverty trap will be eliminated. The Plan focuses on a number of measures that begin to eliminate the cost barriers to education for poor families, while still assuring well-managed and relevant education. A key feature of the planning, implementation and monitoring systems for the ESP is that it will require new forms of partnership in education at all levels. The preparation of the Plan has provided an effective platform, encompassing extensive dialogue with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Interior, Council for Administrative Reform, provincial and district authorities and the international community.

The Ministry's vision of an inclusive education system also includes broad-based participation at all levels of Government and civil society in taking responsibility for planning and implementation of education services. The goal is to gradually put in place systems of mutual accountability between the Government and communities in order to ensure that schools and institutions perform well. An associated goal would be to incrementally delegate greater decision making and spending authority to districts, possibly communes, and schools. In this way all national stakeholders would also have to openly evaluate how the education system is performing and then take steps to improve it. The Ministry’s overall policy goal is to achieve Education For All (EFA) at the latest by 2015, including the increase of enrolment rates, participation, attendance, and other quality-oriented indicators. In the ESP plan period, the MEYS considers as important to focus down on a narrower range of policy objectives and targets which will need to be amended as monitoring tools become available and ESP implementation progresses.

The Ministry's top policy priority is to ensure equitable access and quality/efficiency improvement for nine years of both formal and non formal basic education by 2010. The main targets up to 2005 are:

increased enrolment of students in Grades 1–6 and in Grades 7–9. Targets : 2.4 million and 0.85 million students respectively; net enrolment rates: 95% for primary and 50% for lower secondary education;

gender, socio-economic and urban/rural parity in primary education enrolment, alongside improved gender, socio-economic and geographical balance in Grades 7–9. Targets: gender parity in Grades 1–6. In Grades 7–9: 45% girls, 80% from rural areas, 10% students from the poorest quintile;

improved survival rates across Grades 1–6 and Grades 7–9 for new and current age cohorts. Target: 90%;

significant improvement in the quality of performance and standards of primary and lower secondary students;

raising progression rates in Grades 1–6 and transition rates from Grade 6–7. Target: 90%;

expanded public/ NGO partnership in adult literacy programmes in disadvantaged areas. Target: 200,000 learners per annum from 2003;

increased re-entry programmes into mainstream schooling at Grades 4, 5 and 6. Target: 110,000 students per annum from 2002.

The Ministry's medium-term priority is to enable more equitable access to upper secondary Grades 10–12 and higher education and TVET provision by 2005. An associated priority is to improve the quality and relevance of post-basic education programmes, including assuring a cadre of well-qualified and effective managerial and teaching staff.

The Ministry's reform strategy is also specified in the Education Sector Support Programme (ESSP) 2001-2005. The ESP and the ESSP are guiding the development of the education sector in Cambodia through 2006. New policies and programmes, which stress quality and efficiency, are being introduced at the central, provincial, and institutional levels. Financial reform is key to educational reform, and a joint committee of members from the MEYS and the Ministry of Economy and Finance has been established.

Among the main results achieved in the 1996-2000 period, the following deserve particular mention:

Establishment of an institutional framework (the school cluster system) for strengthening the quality of education and the efficiency of planning, implementation and monitoring. Participatory bottom-up planning exercises were initiated in the six UNICEF supported provinces in coordination with the MEYS.

Development of curriculum, students' competencies, textbooks and teacher manuals for primary and lower secondary education in three subjects (Khmer, mathematics and science), and training in the use of these new materials, and also on life skills including HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.

Construction or rehabilitation of 1,672 classrooms with community participation under UNICEF/MEYS supervision.

Establishment of a nationwide Education Management Information System (EMIS).

Development of MEYS management capacities for executing UNICEF/Government of Sweden supported projects, especially in the areas of curriculum and textbook development, cluster schools implementation and school construction.