Education for Ethnic Minority Education for Ethnic Minority

Our project for a lifetime of learning in Cambodia

Our project for a lifetime of learning in Cambodia

CARE HomeEducation for Ethnic Minority

In Cambodia, CARE is helping children from ethnic minority groups go to school for the first time.

Education transforms lives and helps communities break free from poverty. Yet millions of children in poor communities never make it to school or drop out before they have learned to read and write. The situation is worst for girls and ethnic groups. In many families, girls are expected to stay at home to help with chores instead of going to school.

In north-east Cambodia, ethnic minorities make up the majority of the population. These groups speak their own indigenous languages and have almost no command of the national language Khmer. This means they are excluded from mainstream education, as Khmer is the language of the state school curriculum. Many remote communities in north-east Cambodia have no schools, and ethnic minority students often drop out or never enrol at state schools. The low levels of education make it impossible for minority groups to find jobs, get government services and prevent their rights being violated.

We believe in lifelong education opportunities for everyone. Our work in Cambodia’s Ratnak Kiri province is helping children from ethnic minorities keep learning at school and enabling them to build a life free from poverty.

Fast Facts

  • Cambodia is home to an estimated 24 minority language groups
  • 64 per cent of the population in Ratanak Kiri province is from ethnic minority groups
  • 87 per cent of the students of Ratnak Kiri dropped out after finishing primary education. Most of them were girls
  • CARE’s project ‘Multilingual Education for Ethnic Minority Groups in Cambodia‘ started in 2002
  • Major donor: This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP)
  • Major partners: Government of Cambodia (Ministry of Education, Youth & Sports), Cummins and UNICEF
  • Major location: Ratnak Kiri province, Cambodia

Providing a multilingual curriculum

We designed a multilingual model of learning for ethnic minority children in Ratnak Kiri province. The project has gained wide recognition for its effectiveness in creating equal learning opportunities for ethnic minority children, especially girls. Its incredible success has seen it adopted by the Cambodian Government, and replicated in state schools across the country’s north-east.

Our multilingual curriculum covers early childhood education and primary education, as these years are crucial for a child’s mental development. Research shows children develop vital skills and master education material most easily when they are taught in a familiar language. This model focuses on helping students start their initial learning in their first language before they progress to the new language Khmer later. We are also working towards an easier transition of these students from primary to secondary schools.

Today in Ratnak Kiri, students in these multilingual schools are learning in their native language, with Khmer introduced at a later stage. This makes sure they can eventually attend state secondary schools, which teach exclusively in Khmer.

What we’ve achieved so far:

  • We are distributing a series of textbooks developed and published by CARE. These include reading books and teachers’ guides in ethnic minority languages to support the multilingual curriculum
  • 176 teachers from 14 schools have been trained to teach ethnic minority students
  • We are successfully training schools to provide specific support to girls. More girls are progressing from primary to secondary schools now. In 2015/16, 83% of girls in grade six continued into year seven, compared with 71% the year before
  • 156 scholarships are being provided to children from disadvantaged families. These will help them stay in school and get the lifelong benefit of a full education
  • CARE is working with schools to establish peer counselling, youth leadership and sports activities to improve students’ self-esteem and leadership skills
  • We have developed social issue books to form the basis for an improved life-skills curriculum. To date, two cutting-edge social issue books have been approved by the Cambodian Government
©Erika Pineros/CARE

What we’re doing:

Learning local languages

Children from ethnic minorities miss out on an education, we’re helping local schools teach in local languages, and transition children into learning in Khmer. This will help more children remain in school through to secondary years.

Helping every child attend school

Children from poor communities often cannot afford to send their children to school, CARE will provide scholarships to ethnic minority children to attend secondary school and reduce the drop out rate.

Providing better support

Forums will be established in schools to help children from ethnic minorities improve their self-esteem. We’ll also improve learning environments where teachers and students from both ethnic minorities and Khmer speaking groups support one another.

Better teacher resources

Schools and teachers have limited tools to adapt teaching methods for ethnic minority students, so we’re helping to support teachers, by providing learning materials, textbooks and teaching tools in local languages.

Scholarship provides learning opportunities

Solear* comes from a poor Jarai ethnic minority family. She is a 15-year-old studying in grade seven, even though many of her friends have dropped out of school and are already married. Her parents are farmers and neither attended school and cannot read or write.

Solear had attended a primary school supported by CARE that offers multilingual education.  Now Khmer is easy for her, and she is being able to continue her studies with the scholarship from CARE. The scholarship she receives allows her to stay in the boarding house and provides financial assistance and food packages.

“The scholarship helps a lot. It provides me with food, and with the money I’ve bought my uniform and learning materials. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to go to school without receiving a scholarship”, says Solear.

Solear has great aspirations too. “I hope to become a nurse and practice in Ou Ya Dav (district), so I can help the people in the area especially the Jarai people like me.”

*Solear is a pseudonym in accordance with CARE’s child protection policy

©Nicole Cairns/CARE

Strategic Evaluation Report

View the complete report here

Published by Dr Jack Frawley, University of Sydney

Learn more about our education work:

Khmer – Cambodia’s national language – is the only language of instruction in public schools, but few of the ethnic groups in the north-east provinces speak or understand it. ©Laura Hill/CARE

Bilingual education in Cambodia

Naomi has been a teacher in her hometown of Ukarumpa for almost 20 years. She has always been passionate about education, and for girls in particular. She recently received training through CARE’s Better Governance for Education project to teach her the best way to tackle high illiteracy rates in rural areas. The subject she now teaches to Prep aged children, called Jolly Phonics, is enhancing the way young children learn to read and write. . NAOMI’s story in her own words I am Naomi. I am 36 years old. I’m married, I have three children, Laverdy (f 12), Shelomith (f, 9) Jeremiah (m, 7). Laverdy wants to be a doctor. And she is well on the way to achieving it. She gets good grades. She is in secondary school. My husband is from Bougainville. He’s a plumber. His name is Leslie. He’s 43. I’ve been a schoolteacher almost 20 years now. The job has changed very much over that time. I love my job. I see improvements in my teaching. And I enjoy seeing my former students graduate from higher institutions. When I started I only had 19 students in my class, but in 2018 I have 36 students in my class. That’s a big change. It’s still small compared to other schools though. I decided to become a teacher when I was little; around six years old. I love it. I like talking to people and getting to know people. I had many teachers who inspired me, and I’m sure they made me want to be a teacher. But also, I grew up here. I finished tenth grade in 1997, and I started a daycare centre here. And when elementary education was introduced, I took the six week training and then came back to teach those children. I was very excited by that opportunity. I grew up here. This is my home, my community. I want to teach and support people in my community here. When CARE came in, that was very special. Sometimes the preps have to walk a long way. Sometimes they find it hard to come to school. The government is wanting all the schools in the country to teach phonics, so learning Jolly Phonics was a new thing for me and CARE provided me with materials for the new curriculum to help me teach, and taught me new teaching skills. I learned how to teach Jolly Phonics to children. We also get refresher training as well. This is all new, and most of the teachers from the village don’t have access to knowledge or resources like this. After the training, my teaching style changed very much. I was able to take my resource books and adjust the lesson plans to suit the students in my community better. The training I received from CARE was very, very good. I wish there were more trainers to help overcome the low literacy in the country, to help our students. There should be more Jolly Phonics teachers. I grew up here. This is my district, I want good results. That’s why I am happy that CARE trained me, to improve those results. Now I am also a trainer. I will teach other teachers the best way to teach Jolly Phonics. Children are more interested in the way the teachers are presenting lessons to them than in the content. So teachers must change the way we present lessons to the children to keep them interested. The parents must help their children at home as well. Parents must spend time with their children to work on their homework as well. I see that as very important. It’s more important than getting them to do the household chores or farming. In our culture, boys are the head of everything. But girls are just as good as boys, and we do lots of work too. It’s important to develop and change the way things have always been. A well-educated woman will be more respected in the community. All women in the village should be respected but because of the culture, a woman who isn’t educated won’t feel respected. [Other people will] say bad words about her. They’ll make her feel bad. Like she’s not doing what her parents ask her to do. They won’t value her opinion on things. The girls show more promise than the boys even at Prep. I encourage the girls. I tell them that they can be someone better than I am. If they don’t have that kind of encouragement they might not come to school. If they don’t come to school, I call the parents and ask them why they are keeping their child at home. And I share their progress with the parents to keep them involved and to help them see how important it is that their child stays in school. A lot of people in PNG are illiterate. That’s a big problem we see in school, especially in written exams at secondary school. And the fingers are being pointed at elementary school teachers like me. And I am very cross with this. So my desire is to have more training and grow further. There needs to be more schools for the children who are left out. There needs to be more teachers trained and more funding given to schools. CARE has funded some remote schools, funded building their modern buildings, sponsored teachers. Thank you so much for taking the initiative to come into our remote communities. It’s the government’s responsibility but you have done it. And I am looking forward to you sponsoring more teachers, and you will see success. Interviewed by JOHN HEWAT in UKARUMPA on 18/07/2018. Project information and scene setting information: Children in PNG, especially girls from remote communities, experience profound challenges to getting a quality education. CARE links government and remote communities to develop joint action plans for schools that aim to meaningfully include women and girls. By strengthening community governance and sharing decision-making processes more equally, we see better education outcomes for all. CARE is also supporting Government Education Officers to train teachers and conduct supervisory visits, and is providing teaching aids and learning materials like books, stationery and phonics learning kits.

Better schools in PNG

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“I want to come to school every day”

Students learn from the Lafaek magazine

Lafaek educational magazine

CARE Australia is accredited by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), responsible for managing the Australian Government’s aid program. CARE Australia receives support for this project through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).

Banner image: ©CARE