New Generation School initiative in Cambodia: Revisiting its effects on shadow education

Abstract

This article aims to address a puzzle of whether New Generation School (NGS) initiative has any impacts on the deep-rooted, vexing culture of shadow education in Cambodia. The purpose of the NGS project is to build good human resources with STEM knowledge, ICT, and 21st-century skills, all of which are the necessary commodities in this current fluid society. At the same time, it wishes to remove the ingrained culture of shadow education which is oftentimes offered from public school teachers to their own students. Thus, to realize the above objective, this paper reviews a policy document “New Generation School Operational Policy Guidelines, 2019” published by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MoEYS) and other reports by Kampuchea Action to Promote Education (KAPE) organization. The analysis indicates that NGS has not entirely omitted students’ participation but has eliminated teachers’ engagement in shadow education—revealing its success in building teacher professionalism and effective school leadership, all of which are the complementary strands of school-level accountability and have been the conundrums in this context for many years. This article offers a nuanced understanding of shadow education as it steers the attention of policymakers and researchers in Cambodia and other contexts to look at the factoid of alternative assessments and school-level accountability—having implications on teacher and school leader professionalism and corruption—as the ways to penetrate shadow education.