(English) A multi-year education project to improve school environments and strengthen teaching skills, is using technology to keep children in disadvantaged communities in Cambodia in school.

The Easy 2 Learn project, developed and implemented by ChildFund Cambodia and local partners, is transforming 17 schools across Kratie Province to help improve students’ literacy and numeracy skills and keep them engaged in classes.

In poor, rural communities across Kratie, primary school-aged children are at risk of falling behind in their classes and leaving school early because of inadequate teaching and limited educational resources and facilities. Children who leave school early often stay at home to take care of their younger siblings or enter the workforce to help support family incomes.

ChildFund’s Easy 2 Learn project has been helping to improve the quality of education in these communities by training teachers, renovating schools, and providing resources and new technology to classrooms.

Over the past three years, 17 schools have benefited from more than 23,000 books, 17 laptops, 294 tablets and 119 reading and math toolkits. The project has also helped to build two new schools, seven libraries, and three computer labs, and renovated playgrounds and classroom libraries.

Eleven-year-old Chhaly (pictured below) says the new library at his school has helped him to improve his reading. “I could not read well before,” he says. “Now I can. I am happy to be able to read.”

Chhally, 11 years old

Teachers have been trained on how to develop child-friendly lessons and track students’ progress using literacy and numeracy standards. They have also been provided with tablets with an app that stores test results and provides information on how to help students improve their grades.

Parents and caregivers have also been trained on how to use different literacy tools to help their children read at home.

Sovanneth a mother of two boys, teach her second son, Panhareach, 8 years old, to learn from a reading tool kit borrowed from a ChildFund-supported library

The Vice Chief of Chhlong District of Education in Kratie Province, Monorom, says the pass rate of students in the schools where Easy 2 Learn is implemented has increased from 70% to 82% over the past three years. The student dropout rate has decreased from 7% to 5%.

Another objective of the project has been to establish student councils and peer tutor programs. Grade 1 teacher Manich (pictured below) says the peer tutor program is helping to build the confidence and leadership skills of older students while also supporting younger children falling behind in their studies.

Teacher Manich

To date, the project has supported 6,000 children across 284 schools in Kratie and Svay Rieng Provinces in Cambodia.