Cambodia risks losing another generation

By Kay Johnson

PHNOM PENH (DPA): The 50 or more children crowded into dirt- floored Boeung Chhuok Primary School were mostly barefoot and their schoolbooks tattered.

They would receive only four hours of instruction that day, with their teacher taking the afternoon off to sell vegetables.

Yet, they are the lucky ones simply by being there. Less than half of children in Cambodia complete grade six and only 14 percent reach secondary school.

Ravaged by years of civil war, Cambodia risks falling even further behind its Asian neighbors and dooming its children to a cycle of poverty unless it drastically increases education levels, advocates warned.

"If there is not change, they are going to lose another whole generation," said Louise Ahrens, an adviser at the University of Phnom Penh. "It will just push Cambodia further and further down."

Despite vows to re-channel funds into social programs, Cambodia's government actually cut education spending by 15 percent last year, a report presented to donor nations last week said.

Cambodia's educated class was nearly wiped out by the radical 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, and it has never fully recovered. At least a third of the population is illiterate.

With the long civil war finally over, the new generation of Cambodians under age 18 -- who make up nearly half of the population -- represent the best hope for rebuilding the country.

But education opportunities are limited. A recent report by the United Nations showed that only about 45 percent of children ever finish grade school -- and some believe that number is inflated.

Total government funding to schools dropped to US$32 million in 1999 from the previous year's spending of $38 million, according to the report.

Only 8 percent of the national budget went to education, while about a third was allotted for defense and security, said the report. The education spending figures were provided by the Ministry of Education.

The report was prepared by the NGO Forum, a group of aid agencies pressuring the government to make good on so-far-failed promises to make education and poverty-reduction a priority.

Although Cambodia's constitution guarantees nine years of free schooling for all, families and aid agencies now pay for 75 percent of schooling.

Meas Vanna, a teacher at Boeung Chhuok school, says she is forced to work a second job teaching some students for 5 cents per day just to make ends meet. She insists she only charges for special tutoring, though it is widely acknowledged that most teachers charge unofficial fees from parents.

"My salary is only 100,000 riel ($25), our family's living conditions are very low," she says. "But I never extort money from my students."

Reversing the dismal education trend is no easy matter. Cambodia suffers from a lack of teachers -- many were killed by the anti-intellectual Khmer Rouge -- and a shortage of schools. Only about one in three villages has a primary school, and less than 10 percent have a secondary school.

But educators and aid agencies alike express frustration with the government's failure to provide adequate funds. Pok Than, secretary of state in the Ministry of Education, said that the schools rarely get the entire amount they are allotted.

"The government says over and over that education is a priority, but when it comes to spending, they don't come up with the money," Pok Than said.