Cambodia’s Education System: Looking Back to Move Forward

2022

Education is the backbone of a nation. With quality education, any country can develop its human capital required to drive socioeconomic growth and national development. It is education that enables less developed countries to catch up with their more developed counterparts. This article focuses on Cambodia and its fledgling education system. Drawing on secondary sources, the article argues that education is the key to making Cambodia great again. The article begins by briefly introducing Cambodia's historical context and highlighting its development in recent decades. Next, it delves into the challenges facing Cambodia's education, focusing on key challenges confronting both general and higher education. The article then puts forward a set of suggestions to improve the education system in Cambodia. It concludes that an effective education system is the hope for Cambodia to ensure its prosperous and great future, thereby making itself great again.

ISEAS Publishing, 2012

The education sector in Cambodia has come a long way and achieved a number of impressive accomplishments following year zero, almost three decades of civil conflicts, internal strife, political instability, and backwardness. It is noteworthy that the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) through the establishment of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) in 1992, together with the international partners and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) has done a remarkable job in rehabilitating a dysfunctional education system and rebuilding a shattered economy. However, there is an immediate need to better educate and train more people in order to promote more efficient and superior cadres to build up a stronger nation with an economic self-sustainability. An education that supports the development of morality and critical thinking skills will be increasingly important for all Cambodian students to restore the identity of the Khmer people from one of victimhood to one of capacity, pride and honor, and also to compete regionally and globally. This paper begins by identifying the near eradication of education in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge epoch and will highlight the progress up to the present day. The paper will then examine the challenges of the educational reforms in which both the beneficial and the adverse effects will be presented. As this paper will show, the national strategy to promote new long term and sustainable sources of economic growth as well as improving living standards is based on developing human resources and building human capacity, thus improving the overall quality of education. Additional transformations in the educational sector are necessary for Cambodia to tackle the challenges of the 21st century, including those of globalization and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Only when we can advance education can we advance the nation.

Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 2007

Abstract This paper discusses the key issues and concerns in the Cambodian government's efforts to implement three priority education policies for 2006–2010: ensure equitable access to education; increase quality and efficiency of the education services; and ...

Monash University, 2019

Globalization has a huge impact not only on economy, politics or culture but also education (Mok & Welch, 2003). This creates numerous challenges, such as regional and global competition of the labour market, for most developing countries including Cambodia. In order to possibly tackle this trend, Cambodia needs to improve its capabilities in terms of human resource development by reforming the educational system and curriculum to ensure that the majority of its citizens will have equal access to quality education (Ayres, 2003; Chhinh & Dy, 2009; Maclean, 2002). In this paper, the writer will critically analyze the way in which Cambodia’s educational reform was designed not only to prepare students for the integration of ASEAN economic community but equip them with the 21st-century learning skills. The analysis will focus on the case of New Generation School initiative (NGS) in the secondary education level. In addition, the writer will argue that introducing the New Generation School initiative in educational reform in Cambodia might be a suitable way to minimize a gap in accessing the same quality of education regardless of socioeconomic classes and it can be the beginning of a new chapter in educational reform, which effectively provides students with the 21st-century learning skills in the global perspectives. The two key terms will also be defined in this essay, “globalization” and “New Generation School”. This essay will begin by providing a contextual background of the country-based case and then outlining how the constant development of educational reform in Cambodia can overcome the influence of globalization before drawing a case of similar educational reform in Lao PDR.

Any effort to improve our current situation and the well-being of our society is most effective when we acknowledge the existence of gaps: the divides between policies and implementations, the complaints of under-and over-resourced, the contrast between the haves and the have-nots, and other obvious and hidden gaps among generations, countries and societies. For this fourth issue of THink, contributors write about gaps they have observed -and the potential solutions to bridge these gaps.