1 Scope and Strategic Formulation » Up

The priority strategy for reducing levels of illiteracy in Cambodia in the longer-term must then focus on schooling: ensuring the right of all Cambodian children to complete a basic education of good quality. Within the context of the EFA Plan, an important message is that many of these pressures can, and should, be met through innovative and flexible provision beyond the formal school system. While reforms there are necessary, they are not sufficient.

The scope of EFA plan interventions for non-formal education and literacy will incorporate an integrated approach to providing informal skills training and life skills for disadvantaged groups. This will be planned and implemented through an inter-ministerial approach including MoEYS, Ministry of Women's and Veterans' Affairs, Ministry of Social Welfare and Vocational Training, Ministry of Rural Development and local and international NGOs and community groups.

Key target groups for NFE and literacy programs are:

» Communities in remote low-density and mountainous regions, with particular attention to ethnic minority groups;

» The newly-integrated, resettled former Khmer Rouge communities;

» Street and working children and adolescents in urban slums;

» Demobilized soldiers and their families

» Cross-cutting all of these, girls/women and people with disabilities.

Program strategy within the EFA plan will focus on two main groups covering the following:

» NFE programs to enable children aged 7-12 to re-enter basic formal education and to enable adolescents aged 12-15 to obtain basic education equivalency certification;

» NFE programs to enable out-of-school youth and illiterate/unskilled adults to become functionally literate and develop core life-management and work competencies, including parenting (ECCE) skills and vocational training.

2 EFA Goals » Up

The broad goals underpinning EFA implementation in the Non-formal Education Sector include the following:

iii. Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programs.

iv. Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

v. Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

vi. Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

Specific targets relating to NFE include achieving a 90 per cent rate of literacy among 15-24 year olds by 2005 (see Table 4.3). Resource allocations to achieve these and other targets, however, will need to rely on provincial analyses of need since these vary greatly from province to province (see Table 3, Annex 4).

3 Issues and Challenges » Up

In the context described above and given the limited human, institutional and financial resources available to non-formal education in Cambodia, the EFA Plan does not detail a large range of activities to be undertaken. Realistically, attention will be given to relatively few areas of action, with the expectation that these will be developed through several stages, adapted where appropriate, possibly divided into separate smaller stages, and complemented by additional others.

Furthermore, detailed work plans for the NFE sub-sector are developed on a year-by-year basis, and provide the basis for budget submissions. In particular, the EFA Plan therefore assumes substantial private/community and NGO contributions to both recurrent and capital expenditures for NFE programme implementation.

4 Operational Strategies: NFE Information Management and Monitoring Capacity Building » Up

In order to ensure effective strategic planning and targeting of priorities, the EFA Plan includes significant capacity building of NFE information management and monitoring systems. A key outcome of this MIS development will be improved capacity to assess the overall progress and impact of NFE programs, using lessons learned to inform decision making and the rolling program of NFE reforms.

5 Operational Strategies: Re-entry and Equivalency Programs » Up

Through collaboration among the Departments of Non-formal, Primary and Secondary Education, and in association with relevant NGO expertise, re-entry programs to grades 4, 5 and 6 will be developed. These programs will create a flexible, child-friendly bridge for those over-age children who have recently dropped out of school or are at risk of doing so (e.g. through family and poverty pressures that are reflected in considerable recent absenteeism), but who want and are able to complete formal basic education.

Through collaboration among the Departments of Non-formal, Primary and Secondary Education, and in association with relevant NGO expertise and line Ministries, equivalency programs will be developed, implemented and assessed, aimed at providing Grade 6 and Grade 9 certification for out-of-school youth from 12-18. In ethnic minority areas, specific efforts will be made to collaborate with current NGO activities to incorporate bilingual teaching and materials.

The aim of this activity is not to create a parallel system competing with the formal school. Rather, the purpose is to use the methods and flexibility of the non-formal education modality to provide recognised basic education certification to those adolescents of an age or life situation that would make it unlikely for them to re-enter the formal system.

6 Operational Strategies: Functional Literacy and Post Literacy Programs » Up

» Expansion of Community Learning Centers

Persistent attention will be given to continued geographic expansion, quality of learning and range of services of community learning centres (CLC) as mechanisms for localised, community-owned management of non-formal education and learning, especially in the context of predicted ICT developments, and in some cases, in conjunction with traditional libraries where these may have been or will be established. It is also anticipated that, where appropriate, existing educational and community facilities (e.g. pagodas, schools, women's and community centres) can be used on a part time basis for the delivery of CLC-based NFE programs in order to minimise the need for extensive capital expenditure.

Linked to both functional literacy and life-skills training, continued attention will be given over the course of the National Plan of Action to the further development of the Community Learning Centres approach. The CLC is a delivery mechanism, housed in specifically constructed buildings, schools, temples or traditional village meeting places, aimed at providing openly accessible, user-friendly and flexible spaces for learning managed by and for the community.

» Linking NFE and Income Generation Programs

Support to the development and strengthening of life management, work-related and income generating skills will be an integral, cross-cutting issue, for all non-formal education programming in the long term. This will be most expressly reflected in terms of increasing the attention given in functional literacy interventions to enabling the attitudes, knowledge and skills required for life-management and work. Curricula for re-entry and equivalency programs will also need to ensure that life-skill elements are strongly reflected, and more than is presently the case in formal school materials.

The EFA plan envisages significant integration of NFE program delivery with other community-based providers, especially those involved in rural credit, rural employment and equivalent strategies to assist the urban poor. In addition, co-operation between the training centre staff of the Technical-Vocational Department, the DNFE and relevant line ministries should explore options for developing a training program for local non-formal education/life skill facilitators.

» Post Literacy Programs

The NFE component of the EFA plan also recognises the importance of sustaining levels of literacy after initial functional literacy acquisition. Programs will include provision of self- help post literacy resource materials, follow-up programs at CLCs and other community centres as well as informal support to recently literate people from better educated community members.

» Family-Based NFE for ECCD

The EFA plan also recognises the need to carefully integrate non-formal and informal education programs with broader ECCD initiatives. It is critical that improved levels of literacy within families is used to help implement ECCD and ECE strategies for strengthening cognitive, social and physical development of young children, especially three-to-five-year- olds. Existing ECCD materials, especially those for parents, can be adapted for recently literate parents.