Basic education and teacher training project
Context
Achieving Education for All in the 3 targeted provinces is facing multiple challenges, such as a lack of adequate infrastructure; a shortage of qualified teachers; over-age enrolment and high dropout rates; poor quality of teaching and learning; and low capacities of educational management.
Objectives
The project aims at improved quality and more equitable access to basic education in the 3 targeted provinces. It intends to realise this through 2 major intermediate results:
- Expansion and rehabilitation of school facilities and facilities of provincial and regional teacher training institutes;
- Improved quality of education leading to an increase of promotion rates per grade through strengthening teacher training and curriculum development.
The project prioritizes poor and vulnerable areas and pays attention to gender and environment.
Progress and perspectives
Construction BETT
selected 85 sites for a total of 522 classrooms, 17 canopies and 14 offices. Applying an alternative child-friendly school design, the project has been constructing 14 schools in Otdar Meanchey, 30 in Kampong Cham, and 40 in Siem Reap. Each school is supplied with furniture, blackboards, sanitation facilities and
access to water. Officials of the Provincial Office of Education (POE) have been trained to use a monitoring and reporting tool based on EMIS/GIS software. The School Project Committees (SPCs), POE, DOE and local builders have been trained to supervise construction works. The community has been preparing the land, building fences, planting trees and setting up income-generating activities to ensure a maintenance budget. In the consolidation phase 5 new schools will be built in Otdar Meanchey, 14 in Kampong Cham and 9 in Siem Reap. At the teacher training colleges in Kampong Cham and Siem Reap, the project has improved the water and electricity network. A new practice school and project offices have been constructed at the PTTC in Siem Reap. Dormitories for girls have been constructed at both Kampong Cham and Siem Reap. One more building will be rehabilitated in Kampong Cham in 2009. A new building - including five classrooms and a resource centre - is planned at the PTTC in Siem Reap to complete the rehabilitation works. This will allow the College to serve as a national model for teacher training.
Scholarships
The project has been providing scholarships to over 6,400 beneficiaries at 69 lower secondary schools over 3 school years (2004-05 through 2006-07). World Bank CESSP took over the beneficiaries in August 2007. The Local Management Committees at the lower secondary schools and provincial Scholarship Management Teams have been trained to operate the scholarships programme. A monitoring and reporting tool has been trained to POE officials. Major survey on groups of beneficiaries indicates that the project has been successful at poverty-targeting. Dropout among beneficiaries is mainly related to food scarcity and low performance.
Quality improvement
This component targets 138 primary and lower secondary schools. The project has been developing materials and has been training over 1,000 teachers and over 250 directors to improve the teaching of mathematics. An early literacy programme is aiming at improving the reading, writing, listening and speaking skills of pupils in Grade 1 and 2. Part of the materials are still being developed and will be completed by the end of 2008. A school library programme will further promote reading from Grade 3 onwards. A health education programme introducing basic health, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS issues was launched in February 2007. The programme will enter into the training and pilot phase this year and will be gradually scaled up from 2009 onwards. A bicycle repair programme has been implemented during the first phase but is not continued during the consolidation phase. The project has also been supporting the in-service training of 523 contract teachers nationwide as well as a non-formal education initiative to promote access to the 9+2 teacher training to overcome teacher shortage in the disadvantaged province of Otdar Meanchey. The project has launched a programme to train directors on school maintenance. The directors will further be trained on how to improve their administration, accounting and planning.
