Implementation Stra.

3.3. Implementation Strategies

3.3.1. Educational Reform and the International Experience

The international Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, popularly known as the Delors Commission has summarized the lessons learnt from Education Reform efforts of the past three decades (Delors 1996). While neither underestimating the need to manage short-term constraints nor disregarding the need to adapt existing systems, the Commission emphasizes the necessity of a more long-term approach if reforms required are to succeed. The ESSP appraisal has raised concern regarding the short-term nature of the strategies and activities proposed for the improvement of the quality and efficiency in primary education. UNICEF will support the Ministry in addressing the immediate capacity building needs for the implementation of several Priority Action Programs. At the same time, UNICEF will support system-wide capacity building including development and piloting of long-term strategies in the UNICEF supported provinces of convergence to address the underlying causes of poor quality and efficiency of the basic education sector.

The Delors Commission has also observed that “ [the] main parties contributing to the success of educational reform are first of all, the local community, including parents, school heads and teachers; secondly, the public authorities; and thirdly, the international community.” The commission found that local community participation in assessing needs by means of a dialogue with the public authorities and groups concerned in society is a first, essential stage in broadening access to education and improving its quality. It added that continuing the dialogue by way of the media, community discussions, parent education and on-the-job teacher training usually helps to create awareness, sharpen judgment and develop local capacities. UNICEF support will focus on strengthening the capacity of the first two actors, and at the same time also facilitate co-ordination and communication between national and international partners.

Finally, the Commission states that no reform can succeed without the cooperation and active participation of teachers and recommends that the social, cultural and material status of educators should be considered as a matter of priority. This position is shared by UNICEF so that the Expanded Basic Education Program has provisions to support the MOEYS and teachers for improved working conditions and professional status of teachers. In addition, UNICEF will also promote active participation by teachers in determining their own training needs.

3.3.2. Main Strategic Approaches

The main strategic approaches to be employed by the program will be flexible and diverse. Briefly, they will include the following:

Priority on Children

An important theme of both sub-programs will be to place a high priority on the best interests of children in planning and reform of the education system with as main guiding principles: rights based, child focused, promoting equity, participatory, and reaching the unreached. Especially in contexts where economic aspects tend to be given more importance, these principles will be promoted as entry-points for decision-making. The bottom line for both sub-programs, however, will be impacts in teaching/learning processes and outcomes.

Decentralization

Another guiding principle will be to strengthen decentralization processes. This will be done through a dual process of developing enabling policies at national level as well as institutional and individual capacity at local level to implement them. The articulation between local intervention and policy development will enrich outcomes. To this end, learning from the field in terms of processes, as well as results, will provide important inputs for policy development. Special attention will be given to the strengthening of educational planning, management, monitoring and evaluation processes. Besides supporting the sectoral deconcentration of the Ministry to the province, district, cluster and school levels, innovative approaches will be piloted to strengthen the role of the Commune Councils in the education development of their communes. The communes where UNICEF and the SEILA program converge will be assisted to develop Commune level EFA Plans. The Commune Councils and the VDCs of these communes will be trained on incorporating education activities in their annual plans. Technical assistance will also be provided to the DOEs and POEs to assist them to participate effectively in the SEILA District Integration Workshops and to develop mechanisms for partnership with the Commune Councils. The emphasis of these activities will be to develop the capacity of the Communes to be involved in promoting the access and quality of basic education beyond the construction of physical infrastructure. These mechanisms developed in the convergence provinces will be introduced to the whole of the country through training and study visits of the Commune Council members.

Linkages between Formal and Non-formal Interventions

The government is committed to the goals of EFA by 2015 and to a significant reduction in poverty and growth of democratic institutions beginning immediately. None of these are policies which can be met unless the non-formal education sector becomes a capable and legitimate partner. In the light of this, the program will embrace a mix of formal and non-formal interventions to ensure effective low cost interventions and increased human-resource availability. While targeting the learning needs of the population, the capacities for community participation in effective school management, monitoring and joint school-community learning activities will also be enhanced. This will contribute to fostering a revised concept of the ‘educator’: parents, grandparents, monks, community members and leaders, teachers and peers will all be regarded as important agents of education. Schools and clusters could become learning centers for communities and provide basic learning opportunities to all community members. Strong linkages between villagers, VDCs and SSCs, education and health providers will need to be pursued.

UNICEF supported clusters have amassed considerable experience in identifying measures to increase community participation in education. The program will continue to promote these measures in its development activities. One of these measures relates to efforts to help strengthen the structure of SSCs so that a division of labor is more apparent. Another useful measure is simply giving the committees concrete tasks to perform. For example, providing grants to the SSCs through local cluster school committees has been found to greatly clarify the tasks required to achieve the kinds of participation expected. Activity grants in the past have included support for such interventions as scholarship programs for poor students, support for children with disabilities (e.g., identifying students with specific needs and providing assistance as required), purchase of report cards to strengthen communication between parent and teacher, or breakfast programs. When tasks are made concrete in this manner, it both clarifies and strengthens the kinds of intervention needed to increase community participation.

During the past year the MoEYS’, donors’, and NGOs’ attitudes towards educational development have considerably changed. The ESSP process has summed up this change as ‘partnership not donorship’. In the spirit of this change, the MoEYS has made concerted efforts to involve all stakeholders in the development and appraisal of its Education Sector Support Program. Similarly, NGOs have formed themselves into one body known as the NGO Education Partnership (NEP) in order to work with the Ministry in a more coordinated way. As a prelude to a sector-wide approach to educational development, several donors such as Sida and UNICEF have brought strategic contributions to this process, and are expected to continue to do so. MoEYS as well as its partners will need to pay serious attention to institutional and human resources development using long and short-term technical assistance, training and attachments to local agencies, promotion of provincial and district planning and implementation knowledge and skills and creating sustained networking structures. Available national and regional resources will need to be tapped to the extent possible.

Holistic Approach

One of the important strengths of the UNICEF approach to educational development is convergence between its various programs in Education, Health, Children in Need of Special Protection (CNSP) and Community Action for Child Rights (Seth Koma). Because so many of the problems relating to wastage stem from out-of-school factors such as poor nutrition, health, and poverty, the contributions of these other sectors will be crucial to the realization of stated outputs in the Expanded Basic Education Program. This will be particularly true of the Expanded Learning Opportunities Sub-program for School and Child Readiness in which UNICEF will be supporting school clusters in the provinces of convergence. This sub-program will, therefore, be based to a great extent on village level organization and planning supported through Seth Koma.

Balance between Supply-side and Demand-side Interventions

In line with a number of studies supported by UNICEF (e.g. Bredenberg, 2000) and also the Sida Strategic Study (by Sarvi 2000), the Expanded Basic Education Program will possess a set of interventions that is more diverse than during the previous period of UNICEF/Sida cooperation. In this respect, UNICEF will be supporting interventions that not only address supply side factors within the sector such as quality of teaching, infrastructure, and textbook availability but also demand-side related ones. Because it has been found that demand side issues such as poverty, poor nutrition, and inadequate childcare practices are more responsible for dropout and wastage among the highest risk children, UNICEF will be supporting interventions that address such out-of-school factors. This includes assisting the Ministry to improve ECCD; establish breakfast programs in collaboration with WFP; and provide scholarships for the poorest children and girls.

UNICEF has been in the forefront of supporting distinctive solutions to unique problems in the Cambodian educational system. Thus, an important strategy in the program will be to support local educators and national and international NGOs who are willing to try innovative activities at schools, districts, and province levels. This refers especially to supporting innovative pilots that promote access (e.g. role of Commune Councils in education development, alternative schooling arrangements), quality (e.g. child friendly schools), and equity (e.g. promotion of education for girls, ethnic minorities, children with disabilities). Such pilots would explore alternative strategies as recommended by the ESSP Appraisal. Mechanisms will be established for the active involvement of the MoEYS central level officials in the design, monitoring and evaluation of these innovative activities so as to facilitate the eventual replication at a wider scale.