Education policy and administration

Teachers across Cambodia are insisting pay raises aren’t just an election year issue. More than 30 representative teachers gathered for the start of a three-day seminar in Phnom Penh yesterday to continue demanding living wages. The teacher are asking for 250$ per month, according to seminar ...

The country’s draft $3.4 billion national budget for 2014 proposes yet another $920 million in new debt to make ends meet, the same amount taken on this year, according to a copy of the spending bill obtained Thursday. The draft budget calls for nearly $400 million—or ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on a directive last week to trans­fer 11 government bodies, previously overseen by Cabinet Minister Sok An, to relevant ministries and institutions, further cutting the expansive portfolio of the deputy prime minister in the wake of July’s national election. ...

The National Assembly’s 12-member permanent committee will take its first look at the country’s $3.54 billion draft budget for 2014 on Monday, though officials are still refusing to offer a breakdown of how the money will be spent. The draft, which allocates more than $400 million ...

Cambodia’s newly appointed minister of commerce said Thursday that he plans to reform the country’s economy ahead of Cambodia’s entrance into the Asean Economic Community (AEC) 2015, though he and other officials did not say how they plan to accomplish that goal. Speaking to reporters on ...

Teenage pregnancies are hindering Cambodia’s development as young mothers are unlikely to finish school and therefore lack job opportunities, government and U.N. officials said at the launch of a global report on adolescent pregnancies on Wednesday. “The Ministry of Women’s Affairs acknowledges that adolescent pregnancies have ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday charged convicted British pedophile Richard Fruin, 36, with sexually abusing two brothers, aged 8 and 11, at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, court officials said. While the court has yet to decide Fruin’s fate, his case—and many similar ...

An Oddar Meanchey director of education is denying a complaint filed to the Ministry of Education alleging he took school supplies from a public school for use in a private school and pocketed salaries of teachers who no longer worked there. In a letter dated Monday, ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

The Education Ministry on Monday said it was in line for a near 20 percent hike from the government’s $3.52 billion draft budget for 2014, approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cabinet on Friday, though other details of how money was to be allocated remained ...

Cambodia has made little progress on gender equality and is the lowest-ranked country in the region, according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2013 Gender Gap Index released Friday, slipping a place from last year to rank 104 out of 136 countries. The index examines the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new Cabinet on Friday approved a 2014 draft budget of $3.5 billion, a 13 percent increase over this year’s budget, but gave no details as to how the money would be spent. The CPP also said it will go ahead with a ...

The owner of the popular local ABC radio station on Thursday urged university students to call his station and inform listeners if their teachers discuss information that could be deemed critical of the government. An ABC radio employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity as ...

Two years out from the 2015 Millennium Development Goals’ target of universal access to education, Cambodia remains plagued by school infrastructure shortages, with a scarcity of classrooms and decrepit facilities that threaten students’ safety, NGOs and teachers say. At Slorkram Primary School in Battambang, teachers ...

Despite progress having been made in recent years to improve girls’ access to education, there is still a gender-based inequality, particularly in rural areas, children’s rights experts said on the International Day of the Girl Child on Friday. “At the moment there is still a slight ...

A new set of prakases tacked onto a law that regulates overseas employment recruitment agencies is a “step in the right direction” towards protecting some of Cambodia’s most vulnerable citizens from scams and abuse, local and international NGOs said yesterday. But some remain unconvinced that the ...

Rights groups on Monday shared their concerns about the treatment of women in Cambodia with member states of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Geneva. Cambodia last updated the committee—which meets three times a year to assess how member states ...

Officials, business professionals and political analysts have mixed opinions on the leadership of the single-party Cambodian government and what the future hold for the next five years. Sok Touch, a professor of political science at Khemarak University, said the political deadlock won’t help the nation become ...

It’s one of the world’s 49 least developed countries and almost half of the voting population is unhappy with the current government. But 72 percent of Cambodians are generally happy and spend large amounts of their time laughing, smiling and generally enjoying life. That’s the conclusion ...

With the long-ruling CPP sworn in to govern for another five years despite the opposition CNRP abstaining from sitting in the National Assembly due to election irregularities, a new report argues that imminent threats to Cam­bodia’s future development can only be overcome with significant government ...

Deputy Prime Minister Sok An has a stunning portfolio of positions within the CPP government. On Monday, CPP lawmakers once again appointed Mr. An as the Cabinet Minister for Prime Minister Hun Sen. He is also the chairman of the state-controlled Cambodian National Petroleum Authority and ...

A day after its opening session and still devoid of the 55 lawmakers-elect of the opposition CNRP, the country’s new, one-party National Assembly voted Prime Minister Hun Sen in for yet another five-year term Tuesday and approved an extensive re­shuffle of his Cabinet. In a ...

Amid concerns the Pchum Ben holiday will lead to a spike in bird flu cases, health officials have begun to roll out a widespread education campaign aimed at stanching the spread of H5N1. The highly fatal flu has seen 20 cases and 11 deaths this ...

Ten of the Kingdom’s 24 ministerial positions are set to be reshuffled at the launch of the new government, according to an internal party memo obtained yesterday. Among those tapped for a cabinet position is Say Sam El – the 34-year-old son of Senate deputy president ...