odi - cambodia education - summary case study

8/6/2019 ODI - Cambodia Education - Summary Case Study

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CA M B O D

IA ' S

S T O R Y :

R e b u i l d i n g

b a s i c e d u c a

t i o n

i n C a m b o d

i a :

E s t a b l i s h i n

g a m o r e

e f f e c t i v e d e

v e l o p m e n t

p a r t n e r s h

i p

J a k o b E n g

e l w i t h s u

p p o r t f r o m

P a u l i n e R o s e

Development

Progress



Key messages

1. Cambodia has made substantial progress in re-establishing a more inclusive primary andsecondaryeducationsystemafteryearsofinstabilityandcivilwar.Thecountrycouldreach universal primary completion with gender parity in the coming decade.

2.Successestodatehavebeendrivenbyamoreeffectivepartnershipbetween

government and development partners; substantial increases in educationexpenditure and aid; and innovative projects by non-governmental organisations.

3. Achieving the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will requireincreased investments to reach the marginalised, substantial further reforms toimprove sector governance and comprehensive efforts to address education qualityand relevance.

Rebuilding basic education inCambodia:

Development Progress stories

Establishing a more effectivedevelopment partnership



Summary

A long process of reconstruction, following genocide and

years of instability and civil war, has resulted in substantialprogress in Cambodia’s education system. Almost allchildren are now entering school, and far more thanbeforearecompletingprimary.Thegendergapinprimaryandlowersecondaryhaseffectivelybeenclosed.Therateof improvement has been most notable among girls, inrural and remote areas and among lower income quintiles.

Reconstruction in Cambodia was initially characterisedbyhighlevelsofpoliticalconflictandfragility.Sincethen, the government has worked with developmentpartners to create more functional and effective sector-wide administration and planning, paired with expanded

supply-sideinvestments.Severalhighlyinnovativelocaland international NGOs have worked with the mostmarginalised to improve the quality and relevance ofeducation, fostering community participation and socialcapital to expand access to the poorest. Education NGOsare now also more integrated into sector planning.

High levels of corruption and low institutional capacityconstrain further progress in education. Dropout ratesremain high, and low levels of education quality need tobe addressed. Meanwhile, efforts to improve incentivestructures in educational governance are progressing onlygradually. Achieving the MDGs and Education for All (EFA)

goals will require substantial further reforms.

What has been achieved?

Although Cambodia is still far away from high quality

education for all students, in recent decades the countryhas rebuilt its education system nearly from scratch.Enrolment figures have risen steadily in primary andsecondaryschoolsthroughoutthecountry.Themostnotable improvements have occurred since the onset ofsectorreform(seeBox1).

Almost all primary school-age children now enterschool on time – the net admissions rate has increasedsubstantially, from 71.4% in 1999/00 to 93.8% in2009/10.Universalenrolmentisclosetobeingachieved– the primary net enrolment rate (NER) increased from85.5% in 1999/00 to 95.8% in 2009/10 (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Expansion in primary and secondaryeducation

1

ThenumberofstudentssuccessfullygraduatingfromGrade 6 almost doubled between 2000/01 and 2007/08,with the gross rate of students entering the last year ofprimary – a proxy for completion – increasing from 47%in 2000 to 79.5% in 2008.

Notable improvements have also occurred in secondary

school enrolment. Over the past 10 years, the lowersecondary NER has more than doubled, to 31.9% in2009/10.Whilethisrepresentsadeclinecomparedwith 2007/08 (34.8%), approximately two-thirds ofCambodian children can now gain at least initial access

“Enrolmen t f igure s ha ve

ri sen s teadily in primary

and secondary sc hool s

t hroug hou t t he coun try.”

1MoEYSdata

%

Primary NER

100

80

90

70

40

30

20

10

60

50

0

1 9 9 7

/ 9 8

1 9 9 8

/ 9 9

1 9 9 9

/ 0 0

2 0 0 0

/ 0 1

2 0 0 1

/ 0 2

2 0 0 2

/ 0 3

2 0 0 3

/ 0 4

2 0 0 4

/ 0 5

2 0 0 5

/ 0 6

2 0 0 6

/ 0 7

2 0 0 7

/ 0 8

2 0 0 8

/ 0 9

Girls’ primary NERRemote rural primary NER Lower secondary NER

Girls ’ lower secondary NER Remote rural lower secondary NER

Box 1: Key initiatives to expand access forCambodia’s poor

Fee abolition: Abolition of start-of-year school fees in 2000,paired with extensive information campaigns, has led to a surge inenrolment, particularly in remote areas.

School construction:Inlessthan20years,thenumberofprimaryschoolsandsecondaryschoolshasgreatlyexpanded.Thishasbeeninstrumental in facilitating access to education, particularly in ruralareas.

Teacher recruitment and deployment: The government hasprioritised recruitment of teachers from remote areas and ethnicminorities to teach in underserved schools.

Scholarships for the poor: Local NGOs have piloted scholarshipsfor poorest girls (and later boys), to address demand-side constraints,promote enrolment in lower secondary and incentivise primarycompletion.ThesepilotprojectshavesubsequentlybeenscaledupbydonorsandhavebeenintegratedintothenationalEducationSectorPlan.



to lower secondary education, though less than 30%areattheappropriateageatentry.ThenumberfinishingGrades 9 and 12 in 2007/08 had more than doubled

compared with the beginning of the decade. At bothprimary and lower secondary, Cambodia has achievedgender parity.

Thedropoutrate(particularlyintheearlyyearsofprimaryand in lower secondary) remains high. Also, despite theabolition of start-of-year fees, sending children to schoolstill entails substantial direct costs for parents – in partbecause of informal fees that teachers use to supplementlow salaries. Although inequalities in educationalattainment have been reduced during the past decade,marginalisation remains heavily stratified according togeography (region and rural/urban), income and gender.Nonetheless, the poor in Cambodia are much morelikely to attend primary school than before, with thepoorest quintile making faster absolute progress in schoolenrolment (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Primary school enrolment by economicquintile, 1997 and 20042

Education quality remains a key concern throughout thecountry. A recent Grade 3 assessment involving almost7,000 students found that 60% had ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’skills in reading, writing and maths; there were frequentreports of late starting, early closing, teacher and studentabsenteeism and long breaks during school hours.

3

Further, poor working conditions and salaries haveresulted in low levels of motivation among teachers andthe continued presence of informal fees. Along with

low levels of achievement, this is leading to a feelingof dissatisfaction among parents. Promoting localrecruitment of teachers in remote and minority areas isproving an important first step in addressing this.

What has driven change?

More effective planning structures

Inthelate1990s,discreteandoftenunconnecteddonor and NGO projects proliferated. Central planningwas uncoordinated and under-resourced. Againstthis backdrop, the Ministry of Education, Youth

andSports(MoEYS)anddonorsbegantomovetowardsasector-wideapproach(SWAp).TheSWApframework created multiple avenues of consultationthat had not existed previously, allowing for a movefrom the ‘donorship’ phase of the 1990s towards amoreeffectivedevelopmentpartnership.Whilemanychallenges remain, the new planning structure has alsofacilitated the disbursement of funds to schools andthe implementation of key policies through the PriorityActionProgrammes(PAPs)(nowcalledPriority-BasedBudgets).

Increasedfinancing

Themoreeffectiveplanningstructurewascomplementedby substantial increases in government expenditure andaid to education, to carry out policies and programmesto expand access. Recurrent expenditure on educationhas increased 14‐fold since 1994, with the share in totalgovernment expenditure increasing from 8% to almost20%. Meanwhile, aid to education has increased fivefoldsince 1992 – particularly following the developmentoftheeducationSWAp(Figure3).Thishasenabledthe implementation of many demand- and supply-sidepolicies and programmes to ensure an equitable increasein access.


2=CambodiaSocio-EconomicSurveyData.3ISeeUNESCO(2009)EFAGlobalMonitoringReport2009:OvercomingInequality:WhyGovernanceMatters.Oxford:OUP.

% p e r c e n t a g e

1997

100

50

25

75

0

Richest QuintilePoorest Quintile

2004




“NGO s ha ve had an im por tan t

role in addre s sing educa tion

q uali ty , ca paci ty

con s train t s and

curriculum rele vance.”

Figure 3: Education expenditure and aid toeducation, 1994-2010

4

However, the recent downward trend in educationexpenditure is disconcerting, particularly given theestimated annual funding gap of $100 million annually toreach universal primary completion. Achieving EFA goalswill also depend on addressing the comparatively lowlevel of government revenue collection (around 12% ofGDP).

NGO and community-based innovation

Given the fragility of post-genocide Cambodia, the highly

localised approaches of many national and internationalNGOs have been invaluable in fostering social capital andcommunity participation. NGOs have been particularlyeffective as sources of educational innovation to addressmany of the key problems within the system, includingthe high dropout rate and lower enrolment rates inremote regions. NGOs have also had an important rolein addressing education quality, capacity constraints andcurriculum relevance, through methods that integratecommunity needs, foster participation and promoteimproved accountability structures.

Lessons learnt

• Top-levelcommitmentandleadershipareessentialto

the planning and implementation of policy reforms.TheincreasinglynationallyownedCambodianSWAprepresented an important milestone in systematicallyaddressing supply- and demand-side constraints toeducation.

• Sustainedengagementofdevelopmentpartnershasallowed for a more effective partnership and hashelped gradually increased capacity of officials at alllevels.

• Innovativeprogrammeshaveincreasedtheenrolmentandprogressionratesoftheruralpoor.TheroleofNGOs in addressing demand-side constraints has been

instrumental in the reform process.

• Increasededucationexpenditurehasbeencrucialin addressing the barrier that poverty represents tocomplete schooling, by both reducing the distance toschools and focusing on initiatives to combat dropout.

• Toimproveeducationqualityandsystemgovernance,incentive structures need to effectively promoteaccountability.Institutionalreformsshouldthereforeremain a priority in Cambodia, and aim to foster publicparticipationandimprovedsectormanagement.Thiswill help further expand access, improve the system’s

internal efficiency, address consistently low levels ofeducation quality and address concerns about thesustainability of the ongoing reform process.

U S $ m i l l i o n s

% o

f t o t a l r e c u r r e n t b u d g e t

Aid to education (left axis)

110

100

90

60

50

40

30

80

70

20 5

7

9

11

13

15

17

19

21

1 9 9 4

1 9 9 5

1 9 9 6

1 9 9 7

1 9 9 8

1 9 9 9

2 0 0 0

2 0 0 1

2 0 0 2

2 0 0 3

2 0 0 4

2 0 0 5

2 0 0 6

2 0 0 7

2 0 0 8

2 0 0 9

2 0 1 0

Eduction expenditure (recurrent budget)(right axis)

4MoEYSandCouncilfortheDevelopmentofCambodiadata.



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Thisbriefisanabridgedversionofaresearchpaperandis one of 24 development progress stories being releasedat www.developmentprogress.org

Thedevelopmentprogressstoriesprojectcommunicatesstories of country-level progress from around the world,outlining what has worked in development and why.Theprojectshowcasesexamplesofoutstandingprogressacross eight main areas of development. You can find outmore about the project, methodology and data sourcesused at www.developmentprogress.org

ThispublicationisbasedonresearchfundedbytheBill &MelindaGatesFoundation.Thefindingsandconclusionscontained within are those of the authors and do not

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Photo credits from top to bottomFlickr/ CambodiaFlickr/Luca Penati. CambodiaFlickr/ CambodiaFlickr/CambodiaFlickr/ Cambodia

odi - cambodia education - summary case study

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