Education in the constitution
TheHistory
Traditional Buddhist education
Before the 20th century, traditional education in Cambodia was handled by the localThe French model
From the early 20th century until 1975, the system of mass education operated on the French model. The education system was divided into primary, secondary, higher, and specialized levels. Public education was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, which exercised full control over the system. It established syllabi, hired and paid teachers, provided supplies, and inspected schools. An inspector of primary education, who had considerable authority, was assigned to each province. Cultural committees under the Ministry of Education were responsible for "enriching the Cambodian language." Primary education, divided into two cycles of three years each, was carried out in state- and temple-run schools. Successful completion of a final state examination led to the award of a certificate after each cycle. The primary education curriculum consisted of arithmetic, history, ethics, civics, drafting, geography, hygiene, language, and science. In addition, the curriculum included physical education and manual work. French language instruction began in the second year. Khmer was the language of instruction in the first cycle, but French was used in the second cycle and thereafter. By the early 1960s, Khmer was used more widely in primary education. In the 1980s, the primary school ran from the first to the fourth grade. Theoretically, one primary school served each village. Secondary education also was divided into two cycles: one of four years teaching at a college, followed by one of three years taught at a lyceum. Upon completion of the first cycle, students could take a state examination. Successful candidates received a secondary diploma. Upon completion of the first two years of the second cycle, students could take a state examination for the first baccalaureate, and, following their final year, they could take a similar examination for the second baccalaureate. The Cambodian secondary curriculum was similar to that found in France. Beginning in 1967, the last three years of secondary school were split into three sections according to major subjects — letters, mathematics and technology; agriculture; and biology. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the country emphasized technical education. In the PRK ( People's Republic of Kampuchea), secondary education was reduced to six years. Higher education lagged well behind primary and secondary education until the late 1950s. The only facility in Cambodia for higher education before the 1960s was the National Institute of Legal, Political, and Economic Studies, which trained civil servants. In the late 1950s it had about 250 students. Wealthy Cambodians and those who had government scholarships sought university-level education abroad. Students attended schools in France, but after independence, increasing numbers enrolled at universities in the United States, Canada, China, the Soviet Union, and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). By 1970 universities with a total enrollment of nearly 9,000 students served Cambodia. The largest, the University of Phnom Penh, had nearly 4,570 male and more than 730 female students in eight departments— letters and humanities, science and technology, law and economics, medicine, pharmacy, commercial science, teacher training, and higher teacher training. Universities operated in the provinces of Kampong Cham, Takeo, Battambang. In Phnom Penh, the University of Agricultural Sciences and the University of Fine Arts offered training. The increased fighting following the 1970 coup closed the three provincial universities.Destruction of the education system by the Khmer Rouge
During the Khmer Rouge regime, education was dealt a severe setback, and the great strides made in literacy and in education during the two decades following independence were obliterated systematically. Schools were closed. Educated people and teachers were subjected to, at the least, suspicion and harsh treatment and at the worst, execution. At the beginning of the 1970s, more than 20,000 teachers lived in Cambodia. Only about 5,000 of the teachers remained 10 years later. Soviet sources report that 90 percent of teachers were killed under the Khmer Rouge regime. Only 50 of the 725 university instructors, 207 of the 2,300 secondary school teachers, and 2,717 of the 21,311 primary school teachers survived. The meagre educational fare was centred on precepts of the Khmer revolution; young people were rigidly indoctrinated, but literacy was neglected. An entire generation of Cambodian children grew up illiterate. After the Khmer Rouge were driven from power, the education system had to be re-created from almost nothing. Illiteracy had climbed to more than 40 percent, and most young people under the age of 14 lacked any basic education.Development of the current system
Education began making a slow comeback, following the establishment of the People's Republic of Kampuchea. In 1986 the following main institutions of higher education were reported in the PRK: * theBuddhist education
Before the French organized a Western-style education system, the Buddhist ''Private education
For a portion of the urban population in Cambodia, private education was important in the years before the communist takeover. Some private schools were operated by ethnic or religious minorities —Chinese, Vietnamese, European, Roman Catholic, and Muslim— so that children could study their own language, culture, or religion. Other schools provided education to indigenous children who could not gain admission to a public school. Attendance at some of the private schools, especially those in Phantom Pena, conferred a certain amount of prestige on the student and on the student's family. The private education system included Chinese-language schools, Vietnamese-language (often Roman Catholic) schools, French-language schools, English-language schools, and Khmer-language schools. Enrolment in private primary schools rose from 32,000 in the early 1960s to about 53,500 in 1970, although enrolment in private secondary schools dropped from about 19,000 to fewer than 8,700 for the same period. In 1962 there were 195 Chinese schools, 40 Khmer schools, 15 Vietnamese schools, and 14 French schools operating in Cambodia. Private secondary education was represented by several High Schools, notably the Lyceum Descartes in Phenom Pen. All of Vietnamese schools in Phnom Penh and some of Chinese schools were closed by the government decree in 1970. There has been a re-emergence of private schools in Phantom Pena. Organisations from Turkey and the U.S. operate private schools and charities. Mazama International operates two elementary and high schools, andEarly childhood care and education (EKE)
Cambodia has a population of about 14 million, with around 1.5 million children below 5 years.UNICEF. 2012. ''The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World''. New York, UNICEF. In 2007, when the UNICEF study was conducted, it had an under-5 mortality of 91 and a high rate (37 percent) of stunting. By 2010, the under-5 mortality rate had decreased to 58, but there still is a high rate of moderate to severe stunting (40 percent in 2006-2010) in Cambodia. In 2005-2006, the enrolment rate in EKE for 3-5-year-old in Cambodia was about 12 percent overall.Royal Government of Cambodia (CARGO). 2006. ''Early Childhood Care and Education Enrolments. Ministry of Education'', Youth and Sports (Moneys) Management Information System. Cambodia: Royal Government of Cambodia For 5- to 6-year-old, it was 27.27 percent. In state pre-schools 21.23 percent; private pre-schools 1.43 percent; community pre-schools 3.96 percent and home-based programmed 0.84 percent. More recent figures indicate that in 2009-2010, the mental rate of 3- to 5-year-olds was 20 percent and that it was 38 percent for 5-year-old. The Cambodian government would like to give priority for ECCE to children from poor and remote backgrounds, but it does not have the funds to increase state pre-school provision or increase the national budget for ECCE. There are three main types ofCurrent challenges
Resources
In the first decade of the 21st century, Cambodia allocated around 9% of its annual budget into education to improve its quality. However, 83% of the funds are allocated to servicing remunerations and operation expenses, which might suggest rent seeking in the process. That leaves little funds for schools’ facilities maintenance and to provide proper teaching materials like computers and internet. Cambodia's public expenditure on education accounted for 2.6% of GDP in 2010, up from 1.6% of GDP in 2007. The share allocated to higher education remains modest (0.38% of GDP, or 15% of the total). Only Myanmar (0.15% of GDP in 2011) and the Philippines (0.32% of GDP in 2009) devote less to higher education in Southeast Asia. Moreover, Cambodia still ranks lowest in Southeast Asia for the education dimension of the World Bank's Knowledge-Economy Index. There is insufficient staff in schools, with 58,776 teachers teaching 2,311,107 primary school students and only 27,240 teachers teaching 637,629 lower secondary students. The teacher-pupil ratio is thus very high and might result in inefficiency. In addition, over 60% of the primary and secondary school teachers received at most secondary education, which thus compromises the quality of education. A severe scarcity of schools and classrooms, particularly in the rural areas, limit the number of children who have access to education. Most Cambodian villages have a primary school, but they are not complete and do not offer a full 1-6 grade curriculum. Cambodian children face greater difficulty in the pursuit of a higher level of education, because secondary schools are in less than 10% of the villages. Only 5.4% of Cambodian villages have a lower secondary school and only 2% of them have an upper secondary school. Students can only pursue higher education if they can afford the fees. Therefore, further education becomes inaccessible to the bulk of potential pupils. The percentage of population in each group attending an educational institution is shown in Table 1, indicating that only approximately 14.37% of the population can afford to pursue tertiary education: Table 1Policy implementation
Provincial/Municipal Offices of Education (POE) are responsible for supporting the Ministry in implementing educational policies, preparing and submitting plans for further development of education, providing data and statistics of schools.http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001880/188018e.pdf However, there is a lack of congruence between research and policy, linked possibly to the inadequacy of budget and research facilities, that exemplifies the weakness in analytical research and development for its education system. As a result, there is a significant gap between policy formation, implementation and monitoring in the education system that does not target the specific problems that the educators and children face.Gender disparity
Although the literacy rate and the number of girls graduating from primary school in Cambodia are increasing, the number of girls who drop out from secondary education is much higher than the number of boys. In 2008, the ratio of girls to boys in upper secondary is 75% and only 50% in tertiary education. This disparity can be partly attributed to the higher opportunity cost of sending girls to school as there will be one less helping hand to earn an extra income. The trade-off between school participation and economic activity increases as the child gets older and this trend is particularly prevalent among girls. In 2008, 23% of young women were illiterate compared to 16% of men.Low participation
In 2007, while around 90 percent of children completed primary education, only 35 percent completed lower-secondary education and only 15 percent progressed to upper-secondary education and beyond. This left around 3.1 million youngsters, or 85 percent of 15–24-year-olds, not receiving any advanced schooling. The situation is even worse when it comes to technical and vocational training, where the number of enrolled students aged between 14 and 20 barely accounts for 2 percent of this population segment. This results in a very high percentage of the Cambodian labour force lacking any formal trade qualifications. The vast majority of university students come from wealthy families living in the cities, whereas the majority of basic-level technicians come from low-income families.Dropout rates
Statistically, from 2005 to 2009, primary school enrolment rates for males and females were at 90 and 87 percent respectively while the attendance levels are at 84 and 86 percent of the students heading to school. This suggests that not all the children in Cambodia are able to consistently attend the school's curriculum due to possibly financial reasons, health care issues and even transportation costs. There are disparities between the perceived data to that of the official administrative data rendering the primary school graduation rates. By survey, 92 percent of the children should have completed primary education until the final grade. Formal school's administrative data suggests that only a mere 43 percent have completed primary education. The disparity in the data arises due to the means whereby a child can receive education in Cambodia, formal, non-formal and informal.Lack of awareness
It was established at the World Summit in Johannesburg that education plays a pivotal role in achieving a nation's sustainable development. The lack of awareness of the need for education for sustainable development (ERS) is significantly apparent in Cambodia amidst the financial poverty it faces. The priority for the nation's children is mainly as a contributor to the family's finances and not the establishment of their education.Tertiary education
In 2011, Cambodia has tertiary enrollment rate of 10%, which is low when compared with other nations. Cambodia's higher education lacks world recognition and is not acknowledged byPoverty hindering education
Given that the poverty line in the rural areas of Cambodia is set at US$0.25 per person per daily consumption, 53.7% of the population in Siem Reap is living below the poverty line. Due to poverty, children in Cambodia are forced to give up education to work and supplement the family's income; see Child labour in Cambodia. The cost of sending their children to school is very high in some families, making it almost impossible for the children to receive education. Close to 20% of Cambodian children ages 5–9 are employed. The figures then rise to 47% for children between ages 10–14 and 34% for ages 15–17. Among the number of working children of ages 5 to 17, only 45% have the chance to attend school. Non-economic productive activities such as housework tend to start earlier than economic activities, although less intensively, causing children in Cambodia to be performing ‘double-duty’ — they are involved in housework and economic activity, leaving them little or no time to go to school. Non-economic activities add an average of eight hours per week to the work burden of the economically active children, leading to an average weekly working hours of almost 31. Children having to work before going to school can affect their literacy and numeracy test scores, by nine percentage points after accounting for the differences in school quality. This shows that work affects school enrolment and ability of children to derive educational benefit from schooling. A 2007 report by the Cambodian NGO Education Partnership (NEP) suggested that education costs for each child averaged $108 annually — 9 percent of the average annual income of each family. Clearly, in a nation where having four or five children is very common, the education costs become very significant. The NEP study found that these fees were the main reason given for children not attending school and that a quarter of parents were unaware that their children had a right to free education.Teachers
Teachers in Cambodia earn US$120 to US$150 a month. They resort to collecting informal school fees of $0.02 to $0.05 per day from students to supplement their salaries. This is for teachers in the city only, and it is spreading to some of the provincial ones. This further deters children from attending schools as they cannot afford to pay for the informal school fees. With an average of three children per household in Cambodia, the informal school fees will add up to a significant amount, making it almost impossible for parents to send their children to school. Though there are efforts by the Cambodia government to promise free provision of education, the collection of informal school fees is a huge deterrence for children to attend school. Due to the shortage of teachers in Cambodia, teachers employed often lack proper training and have a high student-teacher ratio. This has led to poor quality of education and high grade-repeat rates among students. From the data, in Siem Reap province, 12% of primary school students failed to be promoted to the next grade level at the end of the 2006-07 school year. Most teachers in Cambodia, especially those in the more remote areas, had not completed their secondary education. With a fast-growing youth population, if teachers are required to possess a certain minimum qualification, the problem of teacher shortage will be more severe.Lack of resources
Due to a lack of resources and minimum government funding for schools, there is a shortage of teaching material and school facilities. According to UNESCO, merely 1.6% of Cambodia's GDP (gross domestic product) is spent on education. Even though the Cambodian government promises to provide $1.50-$1.75 per student per year to each primary school for teaching materials and operating costs, the sum is often insufficient to cover the basic operational cost of the schools. Teachers often have to use their own money to buy items like chalk.Corruption in education
Due to corruption in most parts of Cambodia's institutions, the education institution is not spared. Although there is an increasing awareness of the importance of education which directly correlates with employability, citizens are merely attending schools for the sake of obtaining paper qualifications. There is no great impetus to learn and to increase one's productivity. The quality of education in Cambodia remains doubtful and not all citizens are capable of undertaking tasks that their paper qualifications state they are capable of. Pass rates at schools are not comparable due to bribery and the skewed level of difficulty of tests handed out in schools. On top of this, the Ministry of Education has to decrease the average passing scores to increase the pass rates of students, or the unemployment rate in the country will be higher than reported.Relation with the development of nation
The low 40% enrolment rate at secondary level and 5% at tertiary level has caused the majority of the Cambodian population not being able to converse in English, which is the common language used in the commercial industries. Bill Hayden, Australian's foreign minister said in 1983 that "the only way for Australia to help Cambodia in the reconstruction is to help them to learn English", so that they can request aid, access modern technology and the commercial world, as well as share knowledge to help Cambodia develop. Failing to educate women can also lead to an economic cost of US$92 billion worldwide each year, thus suggesting that educating more women in Cambodia would lead to more economic gains.New Education Minister Reforms the System
August 2014 was the when Cambodian's grade 12 students took their final high school test to get into universities. However, 2014 was the year that the new minister, Hang Chuon Naron, eliminated corruption and cheating during the test. Students could not bring cell phones or calculators into the rooms. Teachers did not have the chance to tell students the answers to the exam questions. The government employed monitors to watch the test-takers carefully. Therefore, only 26% of all students in grade 12 passed the test.The role of NGOs
There is a significant presence in Cambodia of schools built and continuously funded by overseas supporters, and of education-support NGOs that assist with training, resources and funding. The role of these NGOs is significant to the extent that the Minister of MOEYS is on public record as saying that the input of these NGOs is an integral part of the education strategy and that without the NGOs the government would be unable to reach its education targets. The relationship between MOEYS and the NGO sector is integral to the 2010 Education Strategic Plan which stated as an objective:Expand public/NGO/ community partnerships in formal and non-formal education in border, remote and disadvantaged areas as well as increase support for the provision of local life skills and vocational training and basic/required professional skills responsive to the needs of the social and labour market.http://www.moeys.gov.kh/images/moeys/policies-and-strategies/policies-and-strategies/Education-Strategic-Plan-2009-2013/esp-2009-2013-en.pdfIn 2012 and 2013 the MOEYS rolled out a registration process designed to integrate NGOs into the overall education framework and to ensure NGOs meet standards in teaching quality, physical environment and governance. Registration provides a means for some government leverage or control over this sector, as well a clearer means of gathering relevant statistical information. The role of education-related NGOs is likely to become more closely entwined with MOEYS over time.
See also
* List of universities in Cambodia *References
Citations
Sources
* *External links