A hard lesson in arithmetic [-Corruption galore?]

Students exit the front gate of a school in Phnom Penh earlier this month. Photo by Nina Loacker

Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Cassandra Yeap and Mom Kunthear
The Phnom Penh Post

However, students from poorer families are sometimes put at a disadvantage, when teachers refuse to allow those who cannot pay to attend the classes

When Reaksmey (not his real name) was in high school two years ago, he and his classmates were urged to attend the supplementary classes taught by their teachers before and after regular school hours.

For an hour before school and two to three hours after each day, students paid teachers by the hour to attend. And while not stated in so many words, students knew attendance was all but compulsory if they intended to succeed.

“The teachers added more marks for students who took extra lessons if they only needed 10 or 20 more marks to pass the exam,” he said. “Most of the questions that appeared for exams also came from the exercises set during extra lessons.”

His younger sister, 14, now in grade eight at his alma mater, spends about 100,000 riel (US$25) per month for the extra lessons she attends for five subjects. She cited similar motivations for attending – preferential treatment from her teachers and guaranteed top-ups for exam results.

A look at the future of Cambodia's youth and education

Friday, August 26, 2011
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Asian Human Rights Commission

"Many people talk more about Vietnamese immigrants flooding into Cambodia than about Vietnamese products flowing freely into the country and becoming much sought after as they are cheaper than Khmer products"

In this discussion on youth, education, and Cambodia's future, topics in vogue today, I would like to introduce some brief theoretical concepts about perceptions and reality; follow with what some regular Cambodians (whom I have not met) write; and examine some observations and survey results by several organizations. My purpose is to provoke discussion about the present situation in Cambodia.

Perception and Reality

Our unique political socialization; the information we've acquired; our cognition, experiences, values and beliefs acquired from different sources, do influence our perceptions and cause us to evaluate the same experiences differently from one another.

From childhood to adulthood and to the end of our lives, we never stop learning. As a child we learn from our parents and those dearest to us. As we go to school, we learn from our teachers and from books. As we grow up, friends and peers, and our surrounding, influence our behavior. I never understood what my father meant when he told me endlessly as I was growing up, "Live with cow, sleep like cow. Live with parrot, sleep like parrot." In college, I learned that political socialization shapes and molds our characters.

Our values and beliefs are learned. The newspaper we choose to read, the magazines on our coffee tables, the books we read and television shows we watch; the job we hold; the special events we encounter, all contribute to molding our personality. Some of us are unconscious of our learning.

Two quotes I like: "Learning without thought is labor lost," said Chinese teacher Confucius (551 BC-479 BC); and American futurist Alvin Toffler's assertion that the "illiterate" of the 21st century will be "those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

The Constructive Cambodian [-On Cambodia's education system]

Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Tharum Bun
The Phnom Penh Post

AS the Council of Ministers recently approved a draft budget law for 2011, hopes are high for those working in the education sector that this year’s rise in spending on the sector is a sign that public promises from the government to prioritise improvements in education marks the beginning of an upward trend in spending that will ultimately drive improvements in education and the residual development of the country’s human resources as a whole.

While $218 million of the $2.4 billion of spending in the draft budget was allocated to spending on education, a 9 percent rise on last year’s figure, slight increases are not likely to fix the problems plagueing education in the Kingdom, in particular low wages for teachers.

The increased spending on education sends a strong signal that the government’s strategic efforts to meet its 2015 plan of Education for All, as well as its long-term investment in human resources development, aren’t only lip service. But it’s not time to sit back and declare victory.

It’s critical to take a closer look at an issue facing teachers and students in every public school across the Kingdom. The financial pressure on underpaid teachers leads to low morale and stifled motivation among the very people that Cambodia desperately needs to provide guidance to help young children.

Even the practice of paying informal fees to public school teachers for a passing grade, text books or photocopied materials, which is generally seen as a forgiveable form of corruption allowing teachers to stay out of poverty, has a deleterious long-term effect on students whose perceptions of education and morality are shaped by their teachers.

In any classroom it is the teachers who set examples, and the children should follow in their footsteps. Their main role is to educate, to teach children to solve problems by explaining what’s right and what’s wrong. But there are times when their low salaries force them to act improperly. It happens every day and so often that most of us get used to it. It only gets our attention during national exams or tests when it’s reported in the media that teachers or examiners accepted bribes in exchange for ignoring their students, who are busy copying from each other, not to mention getting the answer sheets from their examiners.

A few months back, it became international news when Agence France Press reported that Cambodian high school students used mobile phones to cheat during the nation-wide exam to permit them to qualify to enter university. There seems to be a new spin on the same, tired story every year, but society’s ability to change the perception and behavior of students and teachers involved in corruption needs to happen fast if the next generation of Cambodians are going to have the skills to fill vital roles in improving the country.

How can Cambodia eradicate its rampant corruption when its younger generation sees their respected teachers openly taking money every day? The Anti-Corruption Law will set the rules for some, but as long as teachers must choose between food and morality, wholesale changes in their behaviour seem unlikely. Teachers should be able to rise above these types of problems and serve as role models. It is fundamental to a strong education system.

Children shouldn’t only learn the material in their text books while in school, they should also be guided towards honesty and strong social values. That’s not happening right now, but hopefully continued action by the government to increase their attention, and spending on education, will allow teachers to feed their families without taking money from the families of their students. It may not happen soon, but this could be the first step.

Challenges crippling Cambodian education

Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Diana Saw
The Phnom Penh Post

Three decades after the darkest years of the civil war, the educational system in Cambodia continues to be plagued by bribery, cheating, low wages and funding, and expensive schools

Opinion By Diana Saw

Among students from the poorest 20 percent of the population, education costs represent 79 percent of their per capita non-food expenditure, according to a 2005 study by the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport and UNICEF. Though the government has steadily increased the education budget as a part of total government spending during to 12.4 percent in 2007, according to UNESCO, households, donors, and NGOs still provide much of total financing for education in Cambodia. According to the UNICEF study, there are some 113 organisations that support 223 education projects in Cambodia, at an estimated cost of US$225 million from 2003 to 2008. Efforts by the Cambodian government to improve education in the country should be recognised, but the work has been inconsistent and greeted with mixed results. So while literacy rates have increased from 62.8 percent in 1998 to 77.59 percent in 2008 (according to government census figures), there was little growth in adult literacy in the period from 2001 to 2006. And though school enrollment across all levels has also gone up, to 92 percent, completion rates are still low. DIANA SAW

Cambodia’s education system is plagued by a range of detrimental factors including an absence of suitably qualified or trained staff, rampant corruption and a lack of morale among low-paid teaching staff coupled with the high cost of schooling.

The starting salary for primary school teachers in the cities is US$30 per month. High school teachers are paid between $50 and $60. These low salary figures in state schools fail to attract quality educators, which has resulted in a vicious cycle of uninterested teachers and hapless students. Educators are saddled with the burden of inadequate resources and a shortage of schools and classrooms, particularly in rural areas, limiting the number of children with access to basic education. Schools often have to be content with poorly trained teachers and little government funding, resulting in insufficient teaching materials and poorly furnished school facilities.

Low compensation forces teachers to collect informal school fees from students, creating a barrier to education for poor children. To supplement their income, teachers offer extra, after-school classes for a fee. Often, teachers will withhold the standard syllabi during school hours, reserving them for the private classes, to place pressure on parents to pay the extra tuition. Students who cannot afford, or who refuse to pay, risk humiliation, failing their exams, repeating their grade or dropping out of school. Although collecting fees is officially banned by the Education Ministry, the practice remains widespread. According to the Times Higher Education Supplement, Cambodian students have long admitted that examinations go hand in hand with money. It still costs around US $2,000 or $3,000 for someone to get into a school of law.

Phnom Penh-based NGO Riverkids provides free education for children at risk of being trafficked. Founder Dale Edmonds describes a recent visit to a primary school that most of the children attend: “The bathrooms have been broken for a long time, and the director admitted that they had the funds to repair it, but they had kept them instead. We offered to repair the bathrooms in exchange for a discount on the unofficial daily school fees for our children, but they’d rather collect more bribes. The school is slowly falling apart, and the last time I saw the senior staff, I counted the number of gold rings on their hands.”

Wealthier parents more concerned with their child’s grades see an opportunity to exploit the system, offering to pay for school repairs or building projects, or giving gifts to teachers and principals in exchange for passes or high grades. Parents and others share their complaints over the customs that have been practised for years in this country – corruption that leads to poor delivery of real education.

Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association, has openly criticised the government over poor management and open corruption in education. Rong Chhun added that the trading of scores for cash has gone on openly since 2001, in which student scores from two semesters are added into their final examinations in the ninth and 12th grades.

Because of this growing corruption, there are a considerable number of undergraduate students who clearly do not deserve a place in the universities. Debby Adams teaches English to second- and third-year-level students at Cambodian Mekong University (CMU), a private institution. “One-third of my students can barely speak English,” she says. “Another third are extremely brilliant students who would excel in any country. My challenge is how to help these top students and not leave the others behind.”

It seems that often there is no incentive for students to study as hard as they should in order to pass their examinations. “There is a reluctance to fail students, as failing students mean dealing with confrontational parents who put the blame on the teacher. It also means extra remedial classes. It’s just easier to let them pass,” says Adams.

Impressive statistics [see sidebar] mask a grimmer reality. Academic credentials may not be closely linked to the laurels of political and economic success. However, the culture of corruption, underachievement and worthless paper qualifications is something Cambodia cannot afford or it risks the inevitability of its neighbouring countries’ pulling further ahead of it in development.
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Diana Saw manages Bloom Cambodia, aiming to build a successful social enterprise making trade fair through fair wages and fair prices. Bloom Cambodia makes consumer products such as rice bags with recycled materials.

Govt attacks teachers group over scathing school survey [-As usual, all that Hun Sen's gov't can do is: Deny! Deny! Deny!]

Monday, 30 March 2009
Written by Mom Kunthear and Christopher Shay
The Phnom Penh Post

Ministry of Education calls the Cambodia Independent Teachers Association ‘a group of uneducated people' over its report.

THE Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport lashed out at the Cambodia Independent Teachers Association (CITA) on Friday following the group's release of a teacher survey critical of Cambodia's education system.

CITA claimed that underpaid teachers lead to a corrupt education system where students must pay teachers to attend class, forcing the poorest students to drop out and teachers to lose their social dignity.

In a press release, the Ministry of Education dismissed CITA's findings, calling the teachers association "a group of uneducated people".

In The, the director general of administration and finance at the ministry, said CITA's sample size of 460 teachers out of a workforce of more than 110,000 was not large enough for significant results and questioned how the respondents were chosen.

"I don't know where the statistics came from. It's unacceptable for that many teachers and students not to attend school, but that's not how it works," In The said, referring to CITA's claim that 53.9 percent of teachers occasionally skip school to earn money outside the classroom.

In The admitted that Cambodian schools still have room for improvement but said the picture is not nearly as bleak as the CITA survey suggests.

"Education in our country today is better than before because there are more schools, and we are still building more in people's communities."

But Rong Chhun, the president of CITA, said the Ministry of Education simply does not want to admit how poor the quality of schooling is in the Kingdom.

"The Ministry of Education's press release shows they just want to hide their weaknesses. They do not dare accept the truths about the system they created," he said Sunday.

Despite the government's dismissal of their conclusions, CITA is not alone in stressing the need to raise salaries.

The NGO Education Partnership said in a December 2008 report that raising teacher salaries was a "top priority".

"It is impossible to earn a living on a teacher's salary in Cambodia," the group said.