The 1993 Constitution of Cambodia mandates the obligation of the state to provide nine years of free and compulsory education to all its citizens⁶ —an obligation repeatedly affirmed by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGoC) when it ratified the Convention on the Right of the Child (CRC) and signed the Education For All Framework for Action.

Despite considerable progress achieved by the country after only 10 years of relative peace and political stability and five years of educational reform, key challenges remain that prevent the full realization of Cambodian children’s rights to quality basic education.

Unrealized Universal Access to Primary Education - Cambodia has achieved good success in getting more children into primary schools, both boys and girls. Primary education net enrollment ratio (NER) increased from 86 per cent in 1999-2000 to 92 per cent in 2004-2005, with gender gap reduced by more than half from 7.4 to 2.4 percentage points. An estimated 181,000 ”hard-to-reach” primary school age children remain out of schools— nearly 60 per cent are girls. These include children with disabilities, from ethnic minorities, live in remote areas, are orphans, and are sick or trafficked. Poverty often underpins the vulnerable conditions of these children.

Although children are entering primary schools in ever greater numbers, majority of them drop out and are not able to complete their schooling. According to the EMIS data, only 45 per cent of children who start primary school will eventually reach Grade 6 and only 38 per cent will make it to lower secondary. In Cambodia , it takes an average of 10.8 years for a child to complete the six-year primary education cycle.⁷ This partly explains the slow progress in increasing access to lower secondary education.

A 2004 World Bank study⁸ identified major contributing supply and demand-side factors that affect enrolment and eventually school completion. The factors include: i) widespread child labor that starts at early age; ii) late school entry; iii) lack of school readiness; iv) significant number of incomplete primary schools; v) low quality of teachers; and vi) lack of health-related facilities such as water and latrines and learning facilities such as library.

Persistently High drop Out and Repetition Rates-- A significant proportion of Cambodian children enter school late, repeat several grades and eventually drop out without completing primary cycle of six years. Poverty is the foremost factor that predisposes children to drop out of school. Poor families are unable to pay the cost of schooling that could be as high of 79 per cent of the per capita non-food expenditure of the poorest 20 per cent of the population.⁹ Children’s lack of school readiness—often a result of malnutrition and lack of preschool experiences—is another factor that especially impacts negatively on Grade 1 repetition and drop-out. According to a 2004 World Bank study, late school entry is another predisposing factor that has serious repercussions on drop out rate especially for girls—a 10 percentage point increase in over-aged children would increase the drop-out by 0.5 per cent per grade.¹⁰ The study also noted that delay in initiating schooling has substantial impact on learning, especially for girls. For each additional year that a Cambodian girl delays school entry, her chances of remaining in school are reduced by 6 per cent, her chances of completing primary education are 60 per cent lower and her total number of completed years of schooling is reduced by three years.

Very Low Access To Secondary Education Especially Among the Poor, Ethnic Minorities and Girls- Only 26 per cent of children aged 12-14 years attend lower secondary, and only 9 per cent attend upper secondary schools from the age group 15-17 years. These are among the lowest secondary education access rates in the region. In Cambodia , the fastest rate of increase in secondary enrolment occurs among girls from the poorest communes¹¹. Some of the major access barriers to lower secondary education enrolment include; high direct cost of schooling for poor families; considerable distance of secondary schools to children’s homes; lack of school toilets and water facilities; and high opportunity cost to families of children’s domestic labor, especially girls.¹²

Based on EMIS data for SY 2004-2005, an estimated 853,000 adolescent children age 12-14 years are not enrolled in lower secondary schools, with nearly 623,600 of them still in primary schools. This means that nearly 229,400 out-of-school youth are without access to useful knowledge and skills gained through secondary schooling. This could potentially render these youth more vulnerable to risks of smoking, drugs use, and early sexual initiation compared to their peers in school. ¹³ Cambodian children face other risks that include domestic violence, neglect, HIV/AIDS, trafficking and sexual exploitation especially for girls, and accidents and injuries. Education is seen as a key factor to mitigate these risks by providing children with necessary life-coping skills.

Low Quality of Education - Quality education requires quality learners (healthy and ready-to-learn children), quality learning environments (conducive classrooms), quality content (appropriate curriculum relevant to children’s lives), quality processes (child-centered pedagogy and active learning of children), and quality outcomes ( pupils meet established learning standards).¹⁴ As learners, Cambodian children enter school already handicapped by years of malnutrition and lack of school readiness. They come into classrooms that are often inadequately equipped resulting from a chronically under-resourced system. The learning content prescribed in the curriculum is perceived to be too heavy for children to master given the short learning hours in Cambodian schools. The teaching-learning process is often based on rote approach with very little opportunities for active learning by children. All these invariably result in poor quality education that predisposes children to enter school late, repeat several years, or drop out altogether.

Cambodia for several years pursued improvement of primary education and focused mainly on “access”. This resulted in substantial increase in net enrolment ratios in primary schools for both boys and girls with diminishing gender and socio-economic disparities. This is a positive development. At the same time, improvement in retention rates has been slow and many children repeat the same grade or leave schools without completing basic education. Poor quality is one of the main factors that contribute to high repetition and drop-out.

Serious Inequality in Education- Cambodia has made consistent, albeit slow, strides towards increasing the participation of poorest children, girls and ethnic minorities in basic education through pro-poor policies and programmes targeted to disadvantaged groups. Cambodia however remains one of the countries in the Southeast Asian region with the highest inequality of education distribution across the population.¹⁵ The urban population has an average of 5 years of schooling, while the rural population has 2.94 years. The male population has an average schooling of 4.17 years in contrast to females with 2.54 years. The male-female distribution is even greater when urban-rural data are taken into account. The urban-male population has the highest access to education with an average of 6.04 years of schooling; while the rural-female has the least access with of 2.25 years. Inequality is also evident across provinces—the population of Ratanakiri province has on average access to 1.26 years of schooling; while Phnom Penh has 5.73 years.

In terms of income groups, a 2002 MoEYS study shows that access to education among the poor is indeed increasing.¹⁶ The study looked into enrolment trend analysis from 1999 to 2001 and the findings showed that the fastest enrolment growth rates at primary and secondary levels occurred among the poorest quintiles of the population. The study also showed that the enrolment gaps between the poorest and richest quintiles are decreasing, both in primary and lower secondary. However, despite the narrowing gap, the difference remains significant especially at lower and upper secondary levels.

Low Capacity, Motivation and Pay of Teachers — Teachers comprise 51 per cent of the civil service in the country and Cambodian teachers generally have low educational qualification. Data from 2004 provided by the Teacher Training Department indicate that only 32 per cent of primary school teachers meet the required 12 years of education plus 2 years of teacher training diploma. In addition, teachers’ job satisfaction is also an important issue in Cambodia that impacts on the overall low quality of education. A 2003 qualitative study cited by the WB¹⁷ indicates that the s ources of teachers’ dissatisfaction were low pay, poor supply of instructional materials and the lack of cooperation and communication between teachers and pupils/parents. This poor relationship between teachers and the community is partly due to the collection of “illegal” fees from pupil by teachers, which is in turn a reaction to low teacher salaries. The same WB report further mentioned that based on interview of stakeholders, low pay also emerged as the main contributor to poor teaching quality, which is in turn a major factor explaining the poor learning achievement of children. Although the Ministry issued a policy banning collection of school fees and contributions, anecdotal reports indicate the practice still continues in some schools.

Unpredictable and Low Disbursement of Priority Action Programmes (PAP) Budget— The MoEYS since 2001 has been a recipient of priority action programme (PAP) budget allocations to secure funding commitments for 12 priority programmes outlined in the ESP/ESSP. Actual annual PAP disbursement however has been low and unpredictable. A report from the MoEYS Finance Department show that percentage of PAP disbursements at the end of the fiscal year against PAP allocation for the same fiscal year have declined from 61 per cent in 2001 to 15 per cent in 2004. The report also shows that the carry-over disbursement into the next fiscal year had increased from 37 per cent in 2001 to 83 per cent in 2003. The year-long delay in PAP disbursement had caused confusion as school directors and teachers were not always clear whether the funds they were receiving were from current or last year’s PAP budget. A WB study also concluded that delays in receipt of operational budget led to schools’ inability to implement existing plans and to resort to credit purchases which increase costs or to postpone spending—with deleterious effect on operational efficiency.¹⁸ In some instances payment delays from the provincial treasury caused some of the schools to start collecting fees again in order to survive.¹⁹ The Ministry of Economy and Finance cites cash flow as the main cause of low and unpredictable PAP disbursement.²⁰ With the planned implementation of “no carry-over disbursement policy” beginning fiscal year 2006, MoEYS faces the risk of “losing” part of the 2005 PAP budget unless decisive actions are taken to accelerate disbursement in the remaining months of 2005. The 2005 PAP disbursement level stands at 51 per cent as of end of September 2005.

⁶ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia. “The International Human Rights Framework for Education in Cambodia (seminar paper 2005).
⁷ MoEYS. Education Sector Performance Report 2004. p 13.
^8,10 World Bank, Cambodia: Quality Basic Education for All. November 2004.
⁹ UNDP. A Fair Share for Women. April 2004, p.78.
¹¹ MoWVA. A Fair Share for Women: Cambodia Gender Assessment. April 2004
¹² Ibid.
¹³ UNICEF, UNESCO, MOEYS. National Youth Risk Behavior Survey , 2003.
¹⁴ UNICEF. Defining Quality in Education June 2000
¹⁵ Holsinger, D et al. Education Inequality in the Cambodian Labor Force: Measurements and Implications. August 2, 2004
¹⁶ MoEYS. Poverty Analysis of Education Access Trends (discussion paper). August 2002.
¹⁷ World Bank paper. Civil Service Reform for Teachers (a concept note), 2005.
¹⁸ World Bank. Cambodia-Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) in Primary Education (Draft report). June 2005.
¹⁹ World Bank. Quality Basic Education for All. November 2004.
²⁰ UNICEF. EBEP Progress Report to Sida, April 2004.