Mainstreaming multilingual education through working with the government in Cambodia

• In Event: Working with governments for sustainable and scalable change

Abstract

CARE developed an indigenous community based multilingual education model in the North East of Cambodia. This presentation will focus on the ways in which CARE Cambodia has proactively engaged with the government for sustainable support and change permitting thousands of ethnic minority students to benefit from a multilingual education. For more than a decade, CARE Cambodia has worked with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to ensure that government officials at all levels would be kept informed, were learning with CARE, and were given frequent opportunities to provide inputs into the program. This resulted in an increased feeling of ownership by the government. Alongside the programming an extensive longitudinal research was set up to provide the government with evidence that multilingual education was more effective than mainstream education in these communities.

Convinced by this evidence, the Ministry decided to scale up this model in four provinces in the north east. Annual monitoring workshops conducted by the Ministry, resulted in the formalizing of this model. In 2013 a Ministry Proclamation was promulgated, firmly anchoring this model in the Education Law.

The project is now entering its final stage, by planning the expansion of multilingual education with more languages and schools, providing TOT to Ministry Core Trainers and adding training in multilingual education in state teacher training colleges for indigenous graduates. In early 2015 the Minister endorsed a four year Multilingual Education National Action Plan, linked to the Education Strategic Plan and official recognition and remuneration for the MLE community teachers.

Author

• Jan Noorlander, CARE Cambodia