The success of the Secondary Education Improvement Project (SEIP) in Cambodia was able to provide improved school operations, learning facilities, and training for teachers and school leaders, resulting in 453,838 students, 52 percent of which were girls, benefiting from the interventions. Additionally, the project helped establish 30 new lower-secondary schools, constructed 76 new buildings with 395 classrooms, renovated 437 classrooms, and installed 276 laboratories or subject learning facilities.
The approach taken by the SEIP project was innovative and effective in achieving minimum standards of school effectiveness by introducing school-based management to improve school autonomy, accountability, and assessment. Teachers, school leaders, and community representatives received interconnected training and mentoring to perform their roles more effectively. The project also implemented performance-based disbursement of funding and utilized financing towards eligible expenditures on the pandemic response.
As a result of the project, Cambodia’s education strategic plan for improving the quality of and expanding equitable access to secondary education was supported. This included upgrading the qualifications of 636 school leaders and 2,348 teachers, training 435 school management committee members and community representatives, and providing on-site coaching to all project schools. The impact extended to secondary and primary schools not part of the project.
The project cost $41.4 million, including an IDA credit of $40.50 million and $0.9 million of counterpart funds from the Cambodian government. The Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MoEYS) was the implementing agency and assigned implementing and supporting departments and staff based on their official roles and responsibilities under the ministry’s organizational structure to implement the project’s core activities.
The success of the project continues after project completion, with the MoEYS incorporating project activities into its national education policies and establishing a national committee to implement those policies. The government of Cambodia requested a General Education Improvement Project, with an IDA credit of $60 million and a Global Partnership for Education (GPE) grant of $9.25 million to scale up implementation. A $60 million IDA credit to activate a co-financed GPE multiplier grant of $20 million is being prepared.
