On december 15, 2015, Krousar Yoeung Association, in collaboration with Enfant et Développement, and Plan International Cambodia, held a workshop at Tonle Bassac II restaurant for launching the dissemination and official use the two manuals, Pre-mathematics and Pre-writing for preschool education level.

This workshop was presided by Her Excellency Kim Sethany, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports in Cambodia, and His Excellency Prak Kosal, Deputy Secretary General of National Committee of Early Childhood Care and Development (NC-ECCD) and Director of Early Childhood Education Department (ECE) of the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports in Cambodia and representatives of Provincial Office of Education Youth and Sports from all the provinces and cities in the Kingdom.

“Cambodian is in the new step of developing Human Resources because now we are competing with other countries in ASIA. In fact, in 2014, The Royal Government of Cambodia allocated 16, 8% of national budget, 16, 2% in 2015 and 18, 2% in 2016 for investing in education sector; this is the huge increase comparing to the previous year because government prioritized the education sector”, Her Excellency Kim Sethany  said in her speech.

“No investment is much better than the investment in education and early childhood. The globe focused on Education for All. But later on, through the researchers, we found that investment with children will provide more benefits. If we care about children’s education, children’s nutrition, they will do well in primary schools, it can reduce the dropout….; as observed, there are 3443 state preschool schools and 2559 community preschool (CPS); these CPSs can work because of development partners. According to constitution of Cambodia, in education sector, all children have rights to education equally”, she continued.

“Before, we produced/developed study programs by ourselves; we developed study program for state preschools, then community preschools. Department of pedagogy research is responsible for producing curriculum. After receiving experiences from international countries, we are full of ideas to reform the study programs for our countries; for instance, in Singapore, their study programs are developed based on their development sectors in the country. In our new education framework (including preschool and primary but we will not separate, low, medium, and high level), English language will be included into preschools; if we look at private preschool, English is the core language to attract parents’ attention but state preschool included English because we observed that all the preschool teachers in the future, they will be trained 12+4”, said His Excellency Prak Kosal in his speech.

“We modified these books but not entirely and we modified since 2004; we modified some sections, meaning, and orthography in order to be adapted to the standard of MoEYS; for orthographic modification, we based on the dictionary of Chhoun Nath. We verified and include these manuals into study programs of MoYES, then responded to the needs of language development, reading, writing, and cognitive”, he continued.