Dear Friends,

Tomorrow we leave for Cambodia. This will be the third year that TAB’s Australian team, has presented a series of workshops for teachers and school administrators in the provincial city of Battambang.

This will be my second Cambodian program. My partner and I will present a nine day leadership program for thirty school administrators or directors as they are known locally.

The work is very challenging as we rely on an interpreter and that makes for some interesting interaction.

Last year we became aware that significant cultural differences mean that the Cambodian directors/administrators have a very different leadership paradigm to ours. Their deeply embedded Buddhists beliefs frame their expectations and the way they would like their educational system to operate.

Expectations for teachers were outlined in a document The Seven Virtues of a School Teacher by H.E. Dr Kol Pheng the then, Senior Minster and Minister of Education, Youth and Sports. The virtues included:

• making yourself loved by students
• maintaining a high moral standard, educating
• improving yourself by being equipped with additional knowledge and wisdom
• using only good and useful words
• being patient and compassionate towards the words of others
• speaking words of profound meanings and
• not leading students to plunge themselves into deadly sins.

This is a stark contrast to the Dimensions of Teaching and Professional Standards in my home state, Victoria, Australia with its emphasis on the content of teaching and learning and professional growth. One of our key workshop activities is to get the directors to look at the dimensions and consider the similarities and differences and the application to the Cambodian context.

The directors confront monumental issues in running their schools including very low salaries

There are considerable challenges for the Cambodian education system. For example: it takes a child ten years to complete primary education, there is a teacher shortage as teachers’ pay ranges from $28 to $40 US per month and directors’ pay is $75 US a month (for a large high school with 5, 000 + students). This does not provide an adequate income and forces educators to take on additional work leaving them no time to develop their teaching craft. The discrepancy between rural and urban schools is enormous and the system has very limited data collection and capacity to track school development, student enrolment and school attendance.

MANY TEACHERS HAVE NO FORMAL QUALIFICATIONS

Directors in the provinces find it very difficult to attract teaching staff and the directors feel there is a culture of blaming with very little support for their work.

Despite all these issues we found the Cambodian directors were enthusiastic in sharing practice and very open to new ideas. They wanted to know about the Australian and American education system, enjoyed the chance to collaborate with their peers and responded very well to working together in small groups to examine issues and to try to work out recommendations for systems improvement.

We look forward to the weeks ahead in this very valuable work.