New Generation Schools in Cambodia: a farewell to shadow education?

ABSTRACT

The New Generation School (NGS) initiative, launched by the government of Cambodia in 2015, aims to improve the quality of education including raising teaching standards; improving student performance; innovating curriculum; and introducing accountability measures. Similar to charter schools in the USA, the NGSs operate as autonomous schools and receive funding from public and private sources. One of the key objectives of the reform is to eliminate private tutoring, a widespread phenomenon that has been blamed as a contributor to the poor quality of education and an enabler of social inequalities. Using qualitative methods with fourteen respondent students from two NGSs, this empirical study found that private tutoring still persists in the NGSs for a variety of reasons: catching up with contents; the need for extra exercises; examination pressure; low quality of teaching; and lack of confidence. Positive aspects include the absence of teacher-provided tutoring, a common practice in non-NGS schools reported in previous literature. We posit that more scholarly and policy attention is needed to understand admission policies that arguably favour tutored students and could become a hidden barrier to realizing the government’s promise of a “more efficient and socially equitable” education system.

KEYWORDS:

• New Generation Schools
• education reform
• private tutoring
• shadow education
• Cambodia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors have no funding to report.

Notes on contributors

Davut Nhem

Davut Nhem is a lecturer in the Department of English, Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL), Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), from where he holds his M.A. (TESOL) and Bachelor of Education (TEFL). Prior to joining IFL/RUPP, Davut worked as a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia, and the Department of English, Norton University. His research interests include teaching-research nexus, shadow education (private tutoring), comparative education, and English language education. His works appear in some journals, such as Tertiary Education and Management, Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, and others.

M. Nutsa Kobakhidze

M. Nutsa Kobakhidze is Director of Comparative Education Research Centre and Assistant Professor in Comparative and International Education in the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong. Nutsa is also M.Ed. in Comparative and Global Studies in Education and Development program coordinator. Nutsa's research interests include privatization of education (focus on private tutoring), comparative education, education policy, globalization and education, and methodologies and politics of large-scale international assessments (PISA). Nutsa holds a Master’s degree in International Education Policy from International Educational Development Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA and PhD in Comparative Education from the University of Hong Kong.