Kingdom of Cambodia Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport Reaching the unreached: Meeting of Southeast Asian Countries to achieve the EFA goals together by September, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand Presented by Mr. Ou Eng, Deputy Director General of Education, MOEYS

Outline of Presentation: – Education context in Cambodia; – Sharing experience for specific programs regarding to unreached students;

Education context in Cambodia: Regarding to education for all in Cambodia, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and development partners have implemented specific programs under the policy framework of Education for All National Plan and Education Strategic Plan (ESP) and Education Sector Support Program (ESSP) as follow:

–Pre-school programs; –School readiness; –Multi-grade teaching; –Bilingual education; –Accelerated learning for over-age children; –Development of policy on education for children with disabilities; –HIV/AIDS program; –New project to accelerate EFA.

Pre-school: Objective: –to implement the child right, respond to the child’s need; –Prepare children for entrance in primary; –Improve quality in primary education; Existing programs: –State pre-school; –Community based pre-school; –Home based care; –Private pre-school; Achievements: –Total enrolment: 119,893 of which 60,541 female in Challenges: level of teacher’s salary is still low; difficult to attract and keep qualified teacher. Shortage of classroom and school building in remote areas. Way forwards: increase the pre-service teacher trainee, increase number of pre-school.

School readiness: Objective: prepare the students who have no access to pre-school to learn effectively. Achievements: – the program started in and piloted in 13 provinces with 518 schools, 886 classes, 38,353 students, 885 teachers. With promotion rate 77.59% in compared to 72.34% in Drop out rate is 2.05% in compared to 2.45% in ; –Production of training materials; –In 2006, 2137 teachers received training. Challenges: teacher grade 1 do not focus on 8 weeks school readiness program because they teach multi grade classes; some teachers think that they teach grade 1 students, parents do not understand the program. Way forwards: –Scale up of school readiness program to all grade one students;

Multi-grade teaching: Objective: provide and increase ability for the children in all ethnic minority in the school age to have access and complete nine years of basic education. Achievements: –793 teachers/102 female (2006) have been trained in multi- grade teaching method in 20 provinces; –Produce teacher guide for multi-grade teaching, training materials for the trainers, activity and game study book; –The content as follow has been trained: importance of multi- grade, method of multi-grade teaching, lesson plan and self study, demonstration class. Challenges: teachers still have difficulty in using multi- grade teaching. Way forwards: introduce multi grade teaching in pre- service teacher training curriculum.

Bilingual education: Objective: to provide ethnic minority to develop national language skill; to increase access into national education system. Existing programs: –Ratanakiri (CARE): 3 districts, 4 schools, 280 pupils with 150 female; –Kg Cham (ESCUP): 24 assistants with 900+ in 2006 and 2,000 young cham children in 2007; –Mondukiri (ESCUP): 15 Supplementary Khmer Language (SKL) teachers with about 200+ phnong children in 2006 and 400 in 2007, constructed 38 Intermediate Classrooms (ICRs) in remote communities to provide access for 1,800 children, one ICR costs about $500.

Bilingual education (Continued): Model of timetable for bilingual education : –G 1: local language 80%, national language 20%; –G 2: local language 60%, national language 40%; –G 3: local language 30%, national language 70%; –G 4: local language 0%, national language 100%; Challenges: ethnic minority children have difficulty in learning national language; ethnic minority people do not understand well about the importance of education. Way forwards: scale up to other districts in the province and other provinces with other supporters.

Accelerated learning for over-age children: Objective: –Re-entry the over-age children who dropped out; –Accelerate the study of over-age children in unappropriat classes; –Reduce the repetition and drop out rate; Existing programs: –Prey veng: 3 districts, 25 schools, 1057 pupils with 432 female; –Promotion 81.08%, drop out 6.01% in school year –Kampong Speu: 3 districts, 20 schools, 815 pupils with 389 female; –Promotion 89.61%, drop out 3.9% in school year Challenges: –Not enough documents for the project implementation; –Lack of capacity to open new accelerated classes. Way forward: –Select more schools to implement the accelerated classes; –Train more teachers to implement the accelerated classes; –Impact evaluation of accelerated classes.

Development of policy on education for Children with disabilities: Objective: –Increase awareness and acceptance of disabilities among communities, relevant institutions, stakeholders; –Provide quality of education, life skill or vocational training to children or youth with disabilities; –Increase enrolment, promotion, and survival rates. The policy comprises of six dimensions with their objective accordingly accompanied by six strategies. Each strategy has guidelines for implementation.

Development of policy on education for Children with disabilities (Continued): Existing programs: With collaboration of DAC, Unicef, Unesco the achievements are as follows: –9 provinces/24: 78 schools, 530 disable children of which 259 female, promotion 445/76 female; repetition 72/female 21; drop out 13/8female. –MoEYS collaborate with Kruosar Thmey: in training for 8 provinces and conducting integrated classess in using sign language and braille scripts for 22 disable students. –Conducting 21 classes for deaf with 87 pupils/35 female; a class for blind with 7 students/4 female; –Conducting special school for deaf and blind with 586 students/226 female (3 of the blind students passed Bac II in , 9 of the blind students passed Bac. II in ). Challenges: not adequate human resource, lack of materials and budget. Way forwards: –FTI project will provide assistance materials such as glasses, earing aid… –Prepare more materials and document for training.

HIV/AIDS program Objective: to reduce the impact of HIV infection on the individual, family, community and society. Achievement: –Interdepartmental Committee on HIV/AIDS established in MoEYS; –Program has started in 2001 for primary students; –Strategic Plan for HIV approved in 2008 by MoEYS; –1,130 primary schools with 490, 075 students, 241 secondary schools with 89,256 students and 112,219 secondary student through peer education; –82,544 out-of-school youth through peer education.

HIV/AIDS program (Continued) Challenge: –Time is limited; –Cultural constraints; –No national budget for implementation; Way forward: –Integrate HIV/AIDS program into local life skill in primary; –Integrate HIV/AIDS into school curriculum; –Introduce HIV/AIDS program in pre-service teacher training curriculum;

New project to accelerate EFA Provision of 651 school buildings to incomplete primary schools (one classroom is used for pre- school); Provision of 25 model pre-schools; Provision of 450 community pre-school; Provision of 450 home based child care; Pilot scholarship program for grade 4-6 in three provinces; School mapping for children with disabilities;

New project to accelerate EFA (Continued) Provision of 50 school buildings to over crowded primary schools; Provision of 60 district education office buildings;