Cambodia has had a pretty bad run of luck for the last half-millennium or so.
Education in Cambodia – King Sihanouk took a lively interest in education early in his reign. Between 1953 and 1968 the number of primary students rocketed from 300,000 to one million. Even more spectacularly, the number of secondary students increased from 5000 to around one million.
Nine universities were also established in this period. Unfortunately, despite its good intentions, the program has been widely criticised for creating uniformly poor educational levels and unrealistic employment expectations – there were not enough highly’ skilled jobs to go around.
The Pol Pot regime of the 1970s put a stop to educational development (Education in Cambodia). Indeed, as far as the Khmer Rouge was concerned, education was an evil. Many qualified teachers perished at this time, so that by 1979 Cambodia only had around 3000 qualified secondary teachers left .
Through the 1980s and 1990s the situation has been improving gradually. Adult literacy rates are approximately 65%, but vary wildly between provinces. It is generally thought that overall education standards are higher than they have ever been. Four technical institutions and two universities have been established. In Phnom Penh and in regional centres, private schools have also blossomed, offering courses in English, French, computer literacy and accounting, among other subjects .
Sadly, there is a disparity between the number of males and females remaining within the education system. This can be partly accounted for by the opportunity for males to continue their education within the environment of a wat, thus lessening the cost burden on the family, but must also come down to a certain degree of inequality between the sexes (see Women under the Population & People section earlier in this chapter).
