Education Strategic Plan and Other Policy Documents

In the Education Strategic Plan, the Ministry can, for instance, describe what areas within education that are given highest priority in the coming school year.

Those areas can also be targeted and be the objectives of inspection in order to attain high quality education.

Future strategic plans can also describe areas of development and thereby, create a basis for both thematic and regular inspections.

There are several plans, education policies and other documents published that are of importance for inspection, such as, for instance, the Child Friendly School Policy, Policy on Education for Children with Disabilities, Policy on School Health, and Scholarship Application Guidebook.

3. Quality Improvement through School Inspection

Good-quality education is an essential factor in the development of a country.

Since 1993 Cambodia has had peace and during those 20 years many changes have taken place and much has happened. MoEYS and its development partners have made significant improvements in providing equitable access to education, improving quality and efficiency of education and education management.

Ensuring education is of good quality and of high standard, awareness on contents is indispensable.

1) Quality Assurance Framework

Quality assurance activities will focus on enhancing the process that is used to create end results. For the Cambodian school system, this means that the children and students acquire knowledge, skills, capacity, dignity, good moral behavior and characteristics, which will in turn strengthen each individual to have pride for the nation.

A well-functioning quality assurance system at local levels is a guarantee for continuous activities for improvement. Self-evaluation plays a very important role in the QA system. Therefore, a national inspection must contribute to the development and implementation of routines for an effective self-assessment system at all schools.

School-inspection is a mechanism for controlling and monitoring to see what degree the schools meet the requirements. The inspections assess whether the schools fulfill their responsibilities in relation to the regulations set out in the Education Law. The inspectors also have to evaluate how well educational activities and schools are functioning in relation to other national objectives and the national curriculum.

Perhaps the most important task for inspectors is to check if the schools do have a self-assessment system and strategies for self-improvement. In addition, inspectors should also help schools to implement such system if they have not done so already.

2) Inspection Methods

There are two types of inspection: internal inspection and external inspection.

The internal inspection is based on the school’s self-assessment, performed by school-directors, teachers and students. It also focuses on the quality of internal work at the school using local resources.

The external inspection is exogenous to some degree. This inspection will point out areas that work well or poorly at the school in question, and will contribute to improvement through pointing out areas that need further development. When inspecting schools, two areas are given most attention: (i) assessment of teachers, and (ii) assessment of schools.

The assessment of teachers is mostly carried through classroom observation and teacher interviews. The goal is to observe the teaching methods of teachers. The inspection focuses on the subjects－chemistry, mathematics, etc., teachers’ attitude in class, their teaching practice with given contents, use of textbooks and other teaching materials, and ability to stimulate motivation in students are also observed in the inspection. After each inspection, teachers will receive constructive feedbacks on their performance and recommendations for improvement.

Assessment of schools is often referred to as a systematic inspection because inspectors are reviewing the school system with a holistic approach. The inspectors’

task is to make sure that each school has a system and capacity to follow the requirements set out by the regulations. This means that inspectors are not bound to a specific subject and they can focus on all teachers and school-directors. Also, inspectors may look into the director’s pedagogical work, school’s monitoring and self-assessment systems, teachers’ adherence to curricula and awareness of their mission as teachers, and school equipment and how it is utilized. Interviews with the school director, teachers and students and observations are in this case the main instruments.

Teachers are central to school reforms. Thus, the success of implementing child-friendly models in the context of reform will depend on the caliber of teachers within the system. In many developing countries, a high percentage of teachers lack the requisite level of education and training needed to rise to the challenge of school reform. Moreover, for many reasons, the morale and motivation of teachers in these countries may be at lower levels. If school reform is to succeed, it will be critical to establish well-designed training and mentoring programs that build competency and strengthen the morale of teachers. This will include high quality pre-service and in-service training of teachers enabling them to operate effectively within the challenging rights-based, child-centered and interactive pedagogy that is at the heart of the child-friendly school model.

In Cambodia, the Directorate General of Education and Inspectorate General are responsible for monitoring overall education in the country. Under Inspectorate General, there are two institutions that have controlling tasks: the Inspectorate of Administration and Finance and the Department of Education Quality Assurance (EQAD). EQAD carries out thematic inspections.

3) Thematic Inspections

Thematic inspection refers to a systematic examination and assessment of the quality of business within a defined topic. The assessment is based on an interpretation of national goals and guidelines supported by research findings and best practices. The audit identifies what works well and what needs to be further developed.

EQAD is responsible for thematic inspections. Based on the thematic inspection EQAD further inspects different areas of schools’ work in more detail. Inspections are based on the use of curriculum, goals and guidelines and focus on different aspects of quality. The objective is to instill better teaching practice in the schools examined, with a focus on student learning outcomes. Moreover, once these teaching techniques are identified they will be disseminated to other schools in the country and to the ministry.

4) Regular Inspections

Regular inspection refers to a systematic examination and assessment of all schools, to ensure that they comply with the applicable law and regulations. The assessment is based on the interpretation of national regulations. The audit identifies what works well and what must be further developed.

The regular inspection of schools is carried out by the 24 provincial offices and inspectors. The regular inspection seeks out the general workings of school systems and their ability to fulfill the national objective concerning education. A regular inspection is apply to the following main areas: leadership and management;

teaching and learning; students’ achievements; and quality work - school’s self-assessment. The inspectors assess these areas too see how well the school manages to achieve the national objectives.

Published by Joon-Kyung Kim, President of KDI Printed by GORYEO C&P

©Korea Development Institute 2014

International Cooperation

Vol.1 No.1 May 2014