Education and training
Primary and secondary education
New minister cleans up Cambodia’s education system
Cambodia’s Grade 12 students took their final test in August 2014. Only 26% of them passed. The new Minister of Education had ordered extra security around the testing places. Students taking the test in 2015 know they will have to study hard in order to ...
Robert Carmichael
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/cambodia-education-system-cleanup/2599977.html
New minister cleans up Cambodia’s education system
Cambodia’s Grade 12 students took their final test in August 2014. Only 26% of them passed. The new Minister of Education had ordered extra security around the testing places. Students taking the test in 2015 know they will have to study hard in order to ...
Robert Carmichael
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/cambodia-education-system-cleanup/2599977.html
Largest teachers’ association laments dearth of textbooks
The head of the country’s largest teachers’ association sent an open letter to Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron on Wednesday contending that there is a serious shortage of textbooks and teacher manuals due to corruption and indifference on the part of ministry officials. Rong Chhun, president ...
Ouch Sony and Max Weinstein
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/largest-teachers-association-laments-dearth-of-textbooks-76517/
For failed high school students, an array of options awaits
As about 60 percent of the tens of thousands of students who took the national high school exam—some twice—this year cope with failure, Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said this week the dismal grades would only have a “minor impact” on university admissions and jobseekers. ...
George Styllis and Kang Sothear
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/for-failed-high-school-students-an-array-of-options-awaits-71790/
Failed students weigh future
As the new public school year gets under way this week, grade 12 students reeling from en masse failure at the national exam have a choice to make: repeat their grade or forfeit their diploma. In total, just 33,997 test-sitters, or 40.6 per cent of ...
Laignee Barron and Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/failed-students-weigh-future
Protest leader accuses Education System linked to Politics
Though the Ministry of Education is reforming its system which resulted in only 40 percents of the high school students across the country passed the exam this year, president of Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association Mr. Rong Chhun said that Cambodia education system is linked ...
The Cambodia Herald News Staff
http://www.thecambodiaherald.com/cambodia/protest-leader-accuses-education-system-linked-to-politics-7593
Campaign promotes free textbooks for students
Two NGOs on Monday launched an online campaign to galvanize public support for providing students with free textbooks after a survey found that 85 percent of high-school pupils lack the necessary books for their studies. The Khmer Institute for National Development (KIND) and the Affiliated Network ...
Khy Sovuthy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/campaign-promotes-free-textbooks-for-students-67146/
School lacks basic supplies
The facilities at O’Chrey Primary School in Battambang province are allegedly so basic that it’s difficult to conceive of it as an actual school. The 219 grade one to four students get their lessons crowded in a wall-less storage hut at the edge of a cornfield, ...
Chhay Channyda and Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/school-lacks-basic-supplies
30 pct of students passes high school exam in Cambodia
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday that an estimated 30 percent of the 93,456 applicants passed their high school graduation exam early this month because the country took strict measures to enhance the quality of education sector. ...
Global Post News Staff
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/xinhua-news-agency/140818/30-pct-students-passes-high-school-exam-cambodia
Cambodian high school students start exams for university entrance
About 93,456 Cambodian high school students on Monday took the annual national high school graduation exams, which is a prerequisite for students to pursue their studies in a university level. “A total of 93,456 high school students are taking the exams at 154 centers with 3,779 ...
Xinhuanet News Staff
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/culture/2014-08/04/c_133529984.htm
New rules for proctors
In its continuing campaign to clean up the grade 12 national exam, the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has warned that anyone caught leaking copies of the test or selling answers could find themselves imprisoned. Punishments for misbehaving exam observers are spelled out in an ACU statement released ...
Chhay Channyda
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/new-rules-proctors
Water plan for schools on tap
At nearly half of the Kingdom’s primary schools, students have to make a daily choice between drinking contaminated water or going thirsty, a dilemma the government hopes to soon banish with new minimum sanitation and safe water standards. The guidelines, which have yet to be finalised ...
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/water-plan-schools-tap
NGO observers to get window into cheating
In case cramming for an exam that determines high school graduation and college placement wasn’t stressful enough, grade 12 test-takers will now have to do so under the scrutiny of independent observers tasked with manning every exam-room window. As part of a slew of reforms to ...
Chhay Channyda and Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ngo-observers-get-window-cheating
Protest leads to second chance on nat’l exams
Amid strict reforms to guard against rampant cheating on the high-stakes national exam, education officials yesterday showed surprising leniency towards underperforming grade 12 students. In a notice released yesterday, the Ministry of Education instructed upper secondary schools to hold re-examinations for grade 12 students who failed ...
Chhay Channyda and Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/protest-leads-second-chance-nat%E2%80%99l-exams
Barred from exam, grade 12s protest
Fifty-two students in Kampong Thom are blaming teacher favouritism and an inherently unequal system for preventing them from sitting the national exam and graduating this year. The students, from Hun Sen Taing Kork High School in Baray district, filed a petition to the provincial department of ...
Chhay Channyda
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/barred-exam-grade-12s-protest
Cambodia’s workers falling behind in skills, jobs
With regional and international competition increasing, Cambodia’s workers could be falling behind. A new World Bank report says Cambodia’s labor force lacks the skills to advance the country’s economy, even as an increasing number of young people enter the labor market. Kem Lay, a sociology researcher, ...
Heng Reaksmey
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/cambodias-workers-falling-behind-in-skills-jobs/1940536.html
A failure to communicate
At the beginning of the school year, Mony Vutha was handed a new, mandatory addition to the grade four curriculum that neither he nor any of his colleagues were trained to teach: English. Vutha’s two years of English lessons more than a decade ago made him ...
Laignee Barron and Khouth Sophak Chakrya
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/failure-communicate
Classroom talk remains barrier
Sgnoun Vita can’t communicate with most of her kindergarten students. She teaches them colours and numbers, but can’t understand their questions or chatter. Most of Vita’s students at the Kater Primary School in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district speak Jarai, one of Cambodia’s 24 ethnic minority languages. A ...
Laignee Barron and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/classroom-talk-remains-barrier
Overtime at school goes unpaid
Six months after the government announced that bank accounts for all civil servants would put an end to late salaries and rampant graft, secondary school teachers in Prey Veng say they are owed long overdue payments. In addition to their regular salary, which they already received, ...
Laignee Barron and Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/overtime-school-goes-unpaid
Education official promises to repay shortchanged teachers
A technical error caused 57 teachers in Oddar Meanchey province to be shortchanged when collecting overtime salaries, said an education official who promised the problem will be rectified by the end of May. A teachers’ union on Monday asked the Ministry of Education to address some ...
Ben Sokhean
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/education-official-promises-to-repay-shortchanged-teachers-58749/
Report shows workforce still lacks skills
Cambodia lacks the skilled labor force necessary to advance the economy and the government must find ways to create more valuable work as it faces fierce regional and international competition, according to a new report released Thursday by the World Bank. The report, “East Asia Pacific ...
Joshua Wilwohl
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/report-shows-workforce-still-lacks-skills-58432/
Ministry, ACU continue campaign for clean high school exam
The Education Ministry’s crusade to clean up the national high school exam continued Wednesday, with the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) releasing a statement inviting concerned parties to monitor exams in August and warning that cheats would be failed and effectively banned from sitting again for two ...
Kuch Naren and Matt Blomberg
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ministry-acu-continue-campaign-for-clean-high-school-exam-55667/
Boxes for donations, not bribes: minister
The minister of education proposed yesterday that donation boxes for teachers be installed in schools across the country, but stressed their aim would be to diminish rather than grow a culture of bribery in the system. Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron presented the idea for the ...
Chhay Channyda
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/boxes-donations-not-bribes-minister
ACU Threatens Jail for Students Caught Cheating
The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) will join with the Ministry of Education this year to curb cheating during national-level high school and junior high exams, according to ACU chairman Om Yentieng. In order to eliminate old habits of purchasing answer sheets and paying bribes to exam monitors, ...
Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/acu-threatens-jail-for-students-caught-cheating-54933/