Corruption and poverty get school dropout blame
Filed Under Cambodia, Education | 8185 Comments
At 11am on a recent weekday, Daun Penh district in Phnom Penh is filled with the excited chatter of children as they spill out of a school playground in a messy, giggling wave.
Schoolchildren in neat blue-and-white uniforms, clutching text books, are a common sight. Across Cambodia, primary school enrolment rates are now the highest in the region, according to the 2006 World Bank poverty report.
But despite the increase in enrolment, poverty and systemic corruption throughout the education system are causing a worrying number of children to drop out of school too early to benefit from instruction, education officials told the Post.
“Dropout rates in Cambodia are the hot point for my association,” said Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Independent Teacher’s Association (CITA).
“If we look at children aged between 13 and 15, only 26 percent attend school, so 74 percent of children of this age have no access to schooling. This is a very serious problem for Cambodian society; if education cannot develop, a country cannot develop.” Read more