Country Background
	General Objective
	Policies on Education Development
	Access & Participation
	Quality & Efficiency
	Finance & Commu nity Participation
	Recent Reforms & Future Orientation

HOME

Finance and Community Participation in education

 As Buddhists, Cambodians have a long tradition of organizing merit-making festivals to build pagodas, schools and roads.  After the collapse of the Pol Pot regime, the Cambodian people enthusiastically made large contributions, according to their own means and resources, to the construction of schools to benefit the local community.  The “riel” (local currency) had not yet been put back into circulation following the Pol Pot era, so Cambodians committed themselves to continuing to strengthen the education system through contributions either in terms of materials or labor. 

Education surveys have shown that  Cambodia is one of the countries in the world in which a very high proportion of the resources for primary education come from the local community.  This has perhaps resulted from the fact that the Cambodian people had suffered greatly through a murderous regime, thus boosting their desire to restore their country’s education system. 

To keep schools functioning well, the community has to, through “Parents’ Associations” or “School Supporting Committees”, raise money to cover not only the recurrent expenses, but also to sponsor all sport and art activities.

The national budget for education can cover staff salaries (teachers and education administrators) and a small part of recurrent expenditures incurred by central and provincial levels.  For the current year 1998, the government has allocated 147 billion riels (about   $US 40 million at current exchange rate) to the education sector, thus representing 10.3% of the national budget or about 1.5% of the GDP.  In contrast, in 1997 the education budget was 8.1% of the national budget.  Nevertheless, the value of the 1998 budget is far lower than the actual needs of the MoEYS.

 International co-operation

Non-refundable aid and low-interest loans are the practices of international cooperation.  International cooperation can be seen in the form of multilateral or bilateral aid and the aid channeled through non-governmental organizations.  In most cases, donors themselves are the executors of these aid projects and entrust their consultants or certain organizations to manage and execute the project. 

The agencies that provide multilateral aid to the education system include:

•  The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which provides assistance with textbook development and technical training.

•  The UN family, including UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA and UNESCO.  Parts of their respective country programs are implemented by ILO and UNDP/CARERE.

•  The World Bank, which is studying the feasibility of granting loans to Cambodia.

•   European Union through PASEC, which has just completed the first phase of its country program. The second phase is ongoing for the next 2 years.

 Bilateral donors include:  

Francophone and Institute of Technology of Cambodia with:

- ACCT (Agence de Coopération culturelle et Technique)
- AUPELF-UREF (Association des Universités Partiellement et Entièrement de Langue Française et Union des Réseaux d'Expression Française).

•  Australia AusAID (Australian Agency International Development).

• Japan through: JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency).

•  ODA/UK through: CfBT - CBC.....

•  Germany through: GTZ - Don Bosco

• China: Sport project

• Russia: Scholarship

• Vietnam: Scholarship

Aid is also channeled through NGOs such as:

•  Redd Barna (Norway)

•   Care International (USA - Australia)

•  JSRC, JIVC,..... Japan

• ASAC - Japan

• Taipei Overseas Peace Service (TOPS).

•  Enfant du Camboge

• ICS (Netherlands)

• Assemblies of Gods

• Pour un Sourire d'Enfant

• SIPAR

• Quaker Service Australia

• Lutheran World Service

• Don Bosco Foundation

• VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas)

• World Vision

• New Huymanity 

UP