Catalog

A Book of my Own

By Marcia R. Samson (csamson@adb.org)
Editorial Coordinator

PROUD LEADERS: Grade 2 children and their new textbooks at Wath Tmet Primary School, Kandal Province.

Cambodian children are hungry for education. But textbooks have been a scarce commodity, with four to five students often having to share the same book—if they were lucky.

Things are changing, however, thanks to an Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded project through which a total of more than 6 million copies of 38 titles on mathematics, social studies, and science have been printed in the Khmer language in mid-2000.

About 28 million textbooks and 500,000 teacher guides will be developed and provided to primary and lower secondary school students and teachers when the Project is completed in October 2001. The goal is to enable each student to have his or her own book instead of having to share. International research indicates that textbook availability is key to improving students’ achievements and the quality of education.

The Basic Education Textbook Project, a US$20 million loan approved by ADB in 1996, has been addressing the serious lack of textbooks and other teaching materials in Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge period, when formal education was abandoned, books and equipment were destroyed, and an estimated 75 percent of teachers and students either fled or died.

As a result of this Project, about 22 million textbooks and 500,000 teachers’ man- uals have already been distributed. In general, all grade 1-9 students now have textbooks of improved quality, even in remote areas.

“The shortage of educational materials for both teachers and students has until now been a main obstacle for teaching and learning,” says Gudrun Forsberg, Senior Education Specialist. “Textbooks and teachers’ manuals are in most cases the only tangible resources that teachers and pupils have, other than blackboards, chalk, paper, and pens. The books therefore represent the curriculum, the syllabus, the content, the methodology, and the teaching resources that form the basis of the delivery of education in grades 1-9. They are absolutely crucial.”

The books are being printed in the publishing house of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport in Phnom Penh, where state-of-the-art prepress and printing equipment and facilities have been provided by ADB and other funding agencies.

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