Primary and secondary education

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

Cheating on national grade nine and 12 exams – which has been rampant in the past – just got harder. The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) announced yesterday that it will enlist the services of independent NGOs, civil society groups and private companies to monitor the more than ...

Beginning this year, all public schools will be required to conduct regularly scheduled forums designed to function as a sounding board between teachers, parents and students, officials said yesterday. The meetings will encourage dialogue about what is and isn’t working in Cambodian schools, Education Minister Hang ...