School Dropping Out Prevention Project

The project started in June 2009 in Chroy Ampil village, Kbal Koh commune, Kien Svay district under financial support of the J. Kawakami Memorial Trust for Culture and Education. Teaching activities focused on the 3 levels of education including primary school (only grade 6), lower high school (grade 9) and upper high school (grade 12). Teaching activities included Khmer literature, mathematics, physics, biology, English and chemistry for students who were at grades 9 and 12 for entry exam preparation into upper high school for grade 9 students and into university for grade 12 students.

 The project objective is to reduce the rate of school dropping out and illiteracy of the poorest children in Kien Svay district, Kandal province through provision of out-of-school most important subjects for future entry exams into higher education, eg. high schools and universities. The project goal is to increase the number of poorest children at higher education level contributing to increased local human resources for community development.

From June 2009 to March 2010, 277 students of grades, 9, 11 and 12 were allowed to attend out-of-school classes of Khmer Association for Development.  Almost all of them obtained additional knowledge, passed their exams and rose up to higher education towards reduction of school dropping out, illiteracy and increase in the number of poorest children at higher education levels. In the future, the number of human resources for community development would be increased.

Currently, there isn’t enough human resource for helping develop rural communities due to high rate of poverty, school dropping out and illiteracy. All these makes development goes very slowly, eg. Most of commune council members were elected by local people for commune development have little education, don’t have any development ideas or techniques and only adhere to communist concepts and to undeveloped, previous regimes’ working methodologies. The young generation is not encouraged or provided with great chance to reach higher education to absorb knowledge, skills, experiences and modern technologies for commune development. The young teachers with high education gather only in the towns and cities. When being deployed in rural areas, they bribe the corrupt higher ranking government officials to return to the towns or cities for good posts.