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Household structure and child education in Cambodia

of this pragmatism is that nuclear households are less common in urban areas than in rural areas (Heuveline and Hong,
2016), as urban households are more frequently solicited to take in rural relatives who want to pursue work or education
opportunities in the city.

1.2.2 Education and Social Welfare

The Royal Government of Cambodia’s (RGC) official target is for all children to receive nine years of basic education
from the first-grade enrollment age of 6 years to age 15 years (Ayres, 2000). School enrollment among 6-to-14 year-
olds has been gradually increasing, reaching 88.5% for girls and 86.9% for boys in 2014, up from 84.5% and 83.9%
respectively in 2009 (National Institute of Statistics, 2015). As public education in Cambodia follows a 6 + 3 + 3 model (6
years of primary education, 3 years of lower- and 3 years of upper-secondary education), the 9-year target corresponds in
theory to lower-secondary school completion. In reality though, late enrollment in first grade and grade repetition are both
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common. National statistics suggest that less than half of the 7 graders are of the expected age of 12 years or younger
(Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, 1997). The proportion of 18-to-24 year-olds who have actually completed
lower-secondary school has increased from 27.3% for females and 37.3% for males in 2009 to 41.1% for females and
43.0% for males in 2014 (National Institute of Statistics, 2015). Nevertheless, more than half of the youths in these
cohorts still fail to meet the official basic-education target.
The RGC has been aggressively attacking one of the barriers to universal school attendance—distance from the closest
school in rural areas. In the past, parents might have been particularly reluctant to send young girls far away from their
home village. Gender differences in attendance have declined as the RGC is moving closer to its stated goal of one
primary school per village and one lower-secondary school per commune—an administrative unit typically consisting of
5 to 15 villages, depending on their size (Heuveline and Hong, 2016).
Unfortunately, the RGC has not made a similar commitment to supporting these schools’ operating costs and their
teachers’ salaries (Ayres, 2000; Brehm, 2016). Public schools’ tuition and fees are low, but their students are expected to
buy their own textbooks and supplies, as well as to contribute to some of the school’s running expenses, such as building
maintenance funds, and to “give” to their teachers a small amount of money daily—in effect, a salary supplement.
Another common strategy for public-school teachers to augment their salary is to provide additional lessons for a fee,
often in public-school classrooms (Brehm, 2016; Nguon, 2012). While less than 2% of primary school and lower-
secondary school students were attending a private school, 13.6% of primary school students and 46.9% of lower-
secondary school students were taking private lessons in 2014 (National Institute of Statistics, 2015). Overall, in 2014, the
estimated annual educational costs were $78.5 per primary school student, $152 per lower-secondary school student, and
$303.5 per upper-secondary school student. This compares to an average income per capita just under $1,000 per year, of
which, on average again, $700 is spent on food and housing plus utilities alone. In terms of national averages, educational
expenses may appear modest, but for many households with school-age children, they represent more than a trivial share
of what is left of their income after paying for basic necessities. In 2014, less than 5% of parents cited distance from
school as a reason for a 6-to-17 year-old not to attend school, but 11.0% cited being too poor, another 29.1% the need
for the child to contribute to the household income, and yet another 6.3% the need to contribute to the household chores
(National Institute of Statistics, 2015).
Until recently, the RGC only provided welfare payments to specific groups, most notably its retired civil servants and
veterans of the armed forces and the national police. A large number of un-coordinated, donor-funded initiatives, projects
and activities have sprung up to provide additional support, but these are often limited in geographical scope and duration
(International Labor Office, 2012). Two of the best coordinated social protection programs concern health and education.
Introduced in 2000, Health Equity Funds (HEF) have been funded through the RGC Ministry of Health by international
donors and NGO, which select HEF beneficiaries and compensate their healthcare providers for lost fee revenues. They
have spread widely since, though still substantially shy of the RGC’s target of nationwide coverage by 2013 (Flores, Por,
Chean et al., 2013). Following a similar model, international donors and NGO began financing scholarships for poor
children in 2003. Working with the RGC Ministry of Education, the scholarship program came to identify the transition
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from primary to lower-secondary school as a critical period, thus targeting children in the 6 grade. All 6 graders in any
of the primary schools that feed lower-secondary schools selected by the Ministry of Education automatically apply to
these scholarships. The program was found to have a significant impact on enrollment, but there was no evidence that it
also affected academic achievement (Filmer and Schady, 2009). Moreover, the program remains relatively small, with less
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than 15% of students receiving a scholarship to one of the selected schools, which themselves only represent about 1/8
of the lower-secondary schools in the country.

4 International Journal of Population Studies | 2017, Volume 3, Issue 2