In response to the challenges we discussed in the previous article, the government’s Pentagon Strategy prioritizes education reform and aims to implement educational reforms focusing on eight priorities, namely:

1. School reform programs;
2. Teacher development;
3. Digital education;
4. Science and technology education;
5. Improvement of school health conditions;
6. Youth development;
7. Increasing the number of centers of excellence in higher education;
8. System strengthening and capacity development.

However, given the scale of intervention needed, due to a very young population, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) is also developing strategies to bypass the obstacles discussed before:

• Creation of excellence schools called “New Generation Schools” with stronger (financial and active) participation from parents, to ensure teachers’ full-day presence at school and to free them, thanks to a salary supplement provided by families’ contributions, from the need to give private lessons in the afternoon. This program currently involves 16 schools. The MoEYS aims to establish 500 such schools throughout the country. To these reinforced school systems should also be included Resource schools  that each provides strategic resources to a local network of schools, especially in the provinces, and more recently, Pilot schools  that aim to improve the quality of education, particularly in under-resourced areas, by implementing innovative teaching methods and enhancing teacher training.

• Implementation of community-based school management. In this system, the local economic and social community plays a crucial role in compensating for the lack of public investment and school inspection systems. They actively intervene by taking charge of, for example, equipping computer rooms and becoming more involved in school life to improve ethics in education.

• In light of certain weaknesses in universities, grouping teacher and educational staff training in dedicated institutes: the National Institute of Education (NIE) for high school and middle school teachers’ training, and the pedagogical institutes of Phnom Penh and Battambang for primary and middle school teacher training.

These efforts have promoted an increase in enrollment rates in primary schools (90% of the concerned population being enrolled) and in middle schools, where this rate reaches 47%.

However, this broader schooling has no real positive impact on student achievement levels, as a parallel decline in students’ reading and math skills is observed in national tests.

Growth is also observed at the high school level, but the enrollment rate remains one of the lowest (30%) among equivalent countries, mainly due to economic pressures. In 2019, only 6% of 15-24 year-olds had completed a full curriculum up to the Baccalaureate level. Regarding higher education, a decline in enrollment rates has been observed in recent years, partly due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.