Education: 30% there or 70% to go?
on Sarah G in Cambodia (Cambodia), 21/Jan/2009 00:46, 34 days ago
Its 6pm, 7 days into a new year and I am sitting on the dusty balcony in the pitch-black, bare foot in my vest top. It was minus 10 in the UK last night and it really does feel a world away. The power often fails here this time of day, people begin to arrive home and switch on the lights, I think it overloads the fragile power supply. I keep my laptop charged to provide an hour’s ‘light’ entertainment. Preparing dinner by candle light is not a problem though; I only have two gas rings.I am unsure what to include in this blog. Recent beach holiday? It’s not what I am here for and I want to educate with my blog. Cambodia women I am becoming friends with? I will save that until I can take some pictures and tell their stories. Food? I am looking forward to writing that one as they eat some crazy stuff. But it feels about time I should write aboutwork....There are two ways to describe what I have experienced so far:Education in Ratanakiri province is very poor. Some villages have no school at all; many only have the first 3 grades of primary school. Where there are schools there is minimal infrastructure: small wooden building with no windows or doors to keep out animals, pests, dirt or weather; little shade and no play equipment. Classrooms often don’t have any storage and very few teaching materials or budgets for resources like paper, pencils, exercise books, chalk, and text books. Often there are not enough desk and chairs for all children. Water and toilets are not available to children or staff. Classrooms are dirty. Many of the teachershave had little or no training so lessons are extremely basic.OrEducation in Ratanakiri province is improving. New schools are been built and the government is workingwith NGO’s to improve and ensure all schools provide grades 1 – 6. Teachers take the few resources they do have home to ensure they don’t get damaged. Teachers are creative and use resources like stones and straws as teaching aids. Three or four children often share desks designed for two to make space. Teachers try their best to keep classrooms clean, despite the dust and difficult conditions. All school staff are keen to learn and want to attend any workshops offered. The children are fantastically well behaved and always wearing a smile and often somewhat surprisingly, a school uniform!It is a‘half empty’ or ‘half full’ type mindset. I have been feeling a little emotional this week, sitting in the back of dark and dusty classrooms surrounded by grubby kids receiving sub-standard teaching, but I try to hold myself in the latter way of thinking - I really believe that if you say and think things will and can improve then that will happen....So, help improve education in Ratanakiri province? Where do you start? Using very little rhyme or reason I decided to start with five primary schools, 2 in the town and 4 more remote. There are 154 schools in the province, but hey, you gotta start somewhere....Hun Sen Phum Tmei School, Labansiek Cluster, Ban Lung District, Rantanakiri ProvinceI support nine wonderful grade one and two teachers to make their classrooms and classes more‘child friendly’. Last week I ran a workshop on child friendly classrooms (attempt 2 – the first time we tried to get hold of the head teacher the day before with little success. We later discovered he was too drunk to answer the phone!)The teachers came up with ideas, were really keen to learn and voiced lots of problems. The library has been locked for two years, the classrooms are not secure due to the way they are built so they even take the bin and sweeping brush home at night, it making it almost impossible to put up displays as they too would be stolen. That aside (for now - I will be discussing it will the school director on a sober day!) I provided them all with a recommendation book and they suggested their own ideas about things they would like to try in lessons, putting the desks in groups instead of rows, developing learning corners, etc. I’m excited about my next set of lesson observations; see how they are getting along. I have some new resources for them too thanks to the money I raised at Christmas!I do feel like a little bit of a fraud being called‘neak kru’ – ‘teacher’ when I have never taught a primary class in my life. I go away and madly research anything they raise as a problem but to be honest education is basic and just thinking back to the positive things in my own primary school education is helpful.Kam Bek, Ta Ong Kate Cluster, Kum Mum District, Ratanakiri ProvinceKam Bek has 2 teaching staff, serving grades 1 to 3 with 85 children on role. All the children attending school are Krung (indigenous or tribal– but its not very PC to say tribal) and speak this as their first language. The teachers speak both Krung and Khmer and have received teacher training. There is no water or toilets at the school. The school is wooden, not in a great state of repair and not secure. There is no evidence of teachingresources for use in the school and although all children have text books not all children have exercise books and pencils.Tahouy school, Ta Ong Kate Cluster, Kum Mum District, Ratanakiri ProvinceTahouy school has 2 teachers, 1 teacher is untrained (speaks Khmer and Krung) and 1 is qualified. All of the 73 children on role are Krung (indigenous) and as before speak this as their first language. All teaching take place in the morning and the school provided grades 1 - 3. The school has a shortage of Khmer and Social Science textbooks, some student don’t have writing books or pencils, a set of chopstick were the only teaching aid visible in the school. The school is in a decent state of repair but has very little on the walls and no toilets or well. The school has received no 2008/09 budget yet (term started in October).My idea at these two schools (and a third one called Turn which I haven’t written about) is to get the community and the school working really closely together. I am planning a meeting alongside the school directors with the village chiefs of all three villages next week to try to gain their support; I think the only real hope for the small remote schools is to get the community on board. Schools budgets aren’t enough to buy what the schools need; they receive just 25p per child as their ANNUAL budget. Teachers salaries are $30 a month, which is not nearly enough to live on and $30 can often become $20 by the time teachers receive it due to ingrained corruption. Until these budgets increase (and obviously even after they do) communities and villages will have to look for ways they can work together to educate their children.Class size here can vary from 3 children to around 70. Often children have to work to earn additional money required to feed their family. Children who want to continue their education past grade 6 are likely to have to travel long distances to school and I was in a school recently where 20 children sleep on the floor of the classroom every weekday as it is too far for them to travel from their village every day.I could write so much more about education here but I hope I have given a taste of what it is like. Other work I am involved in includes– starting to support CARE’s (an international NGO’s) Community Support Team, the NGO Education Network Meetings, and I haven’t even mentioned Borey Kamkor 3 which is the school I am hoping to do the most work with. Im starting to teach the Borey Kamkor teachers English on Wednesday evenings, so that will be interesting as they know hardly at the moment!I never know what to expect when I go into the next classroom - from chickens, dogs and pigs wandering around, to children being given the cane, to great lessons with singing and clapping and cheering. It always exciting but sometimes sad, frustrating, tiring, etcIt is not hard to find the energy to go to work every day when you are greeted with this....but it is hard to make enough hours in the day and to find the answers to ANY of the numerous problems faced. The answers aren’t going to come from me though and it would be arrogant to suggest they could, but with confidence, information and motivation I am sure teachers, communities and school directors here can do great things with the little they have.Just one final thought, I have read a fair bit about development, the World Bank, inequality, etc but it has always been something happening to people far away. I now work for a project funded by the World Bank, and things I read about development now have so much more impact, as I see and work with the people described. I found this is an Oxfam publication recently and it is really really relevant to life for Cambodian people living in Ratanakiri province:Charities used to say that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.But…‘A man is just as likely to be a woman and that woman already knows how to fish.She would like her river left alone by illegal logging companies or fish poachers.She would prefer that her government not build huge dams… dams that have damaged her livelihoods.She would prefer that the police not violently evict communities to make way for the dam.She doesn’t want charity. She would like respect for her basic rights.’A female village leader, CambodiaIf you want to read the whole publication (its really good!) its at:http://publications.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam/display.asp?K=9780855986292