Poll shows fighting corruption drives support for education reform in Cambodia
Earlier this week, Cambodia’s Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MoEYS) held a second high school exam to provide a second chance for the over 70 percent of 93,000 high school students who failed to pass the first annual national high school exam, held in early August. The passing rate in the first exam – down a staggering 25.7 percent from last year’s passing rate of nearly 87 percent – is one of the first tangible results of the Ministry’s recent education reform efforts. While the standard of the second exam has been questioned, MoEYS claimed that this week’s exam remained as strict as the first. …
To gauge public opinion on the Ministry’s decision, The Asia Foundation conducted a snap poll from September 13-19 that featured face-to-face interviews with 500 respondents from five urban and rural provinces: Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham, Kratie, Koh Kong, and Siem Reap. Of the respondents, 400 were 15- to 65-years old and randomly selected from the general population, and 100 were high school students from grades 10, 11, and 12. The data collection teams used Google’s Open Data Kit, a smart phone technology that aggregates data on a cloud-based server. ODK allows smart phone users to download a questionnaire from a cloud-based server. Data stored on the phone is then transferred to the server once connected to the internet. …
Silas Everett and Menghun Kaing
http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2014/10/15/poll-shows-fighting-corruption-drives-support-for-education-reform-in-cambodia/
