The QLE expansion project is implemented by KAPE and supported by Save the Children for a period of 4 years from 2015 to 2018. Recently, the project has been conducting training of trainers on collecting children to enroll to study at school. The project held a workshop on “Collecting Children to Access Schools” on 12th October at KAPE’s central office, attended by 13 trainees who were officials of the Provincial Office of Education, Youth and Sport, officials of the District Office of Education, and Deputy Directors from Kampong Cham and Tbaung Khmum provinces.

The aim of the workshop was to strengthen the mechanisms for school development by setting up school networks, preparing to set up the statistics of school education levels, family levels, village levels and school levels, preparing study maps, and enrollment campaigns in order to ensure that the development of basic education in the country becomes more effective.

Oeun Bora, the education project officer for QLE Expansion, said that this supplementary workshop was to reflect on some activities of the project and update child statistics for the academic year 2016 – 2017. In particular the workshop provided understanding of the methods and techniques for the trainees to continue training school stakeholders in the 7 districts in Kampong Cham and 1 district (Memoth) in Tbaung Khmum province.

Participants of the training included directors and deputy directors, school teachers, commune council members, policemen, commune physicians, school support committee members, village chiefs, students’ representatives, and the student council representatives in the target schools. The training is to build the capacity for stakeholders mentioned above about ownership in implementing, monitoring and evaluating in order to enhance the school activities.

Positive impacts can be seen in the target schools that have received training. They understand more clearly the number of children that should be enrolled and local village families living conditions in their schools geographical area. In the 2015 -16 academic year, the project began implementing activities in phase 1 which resulted in benefits for more than 17,000 primary school students. The project also helped to train pre-primary teachers in suitable methods of teaching 3 to 5 year olds.  This benefited more than 6,600 children in 22 of the 28 kindergartens.

Despite these improvements there are still some schools that do not have regular implementation of the new methods.

During the past year QLE Expansion project has strengthened teaching methods with the use of reading benchmarks from grade 1 to 3. This has included improving reading habits in homes. The project also prepared a significant new event promoting social accountability at school level. There were also training courses in using positive discipline, school director training on recognizing types of disabilities in children, as well as a number of training sessions for School Support Committees with the aim of strengthening their roles and responsibilities in school. This training included; preparing the reading coaches inside and outside the schools to promote early reading class, assisting school directors and those stakeholders who are involved in the school development plan, and focusing on impacts of Child Friendly School.