This section contains my suggestions as to policies and practices which will contribute to the development of quality teaching in both Cambodia and other developing countries.
6.4.1 Resourcing education
As argued by Glewwe (2014) achieving quality education requires the appropriate provision of financial support and resourcing. Policies, which seek the delivery of quality education, must be followed by an increased education budget. Schools cannot deliver quality education without the appropriate level of financial support. Schools require the provision of adequate teaching materials and resources including library books and a trained librarian, up to date textbooks, teaching resources and a relevant curriculum.
6.4.2 Developing towards teachers as professionals
The teachers tasked with the delivery of quality teaching need better basic training and the opportunity for on-going teacher training once they are in service including access to a mentor. Policies which promote the development of teachers as professionals help the achievement of quality teaching. These would encourage collaboration between teachers, the sharing of resources and the dissemination of teaching skills. These policies should include the provision of monthly workshops to enable teachers to work together and to disseminate teaching skills through sharing experiences. Using the stages outlined by Hargreaves (Hargreaves 2000) would help
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the teachers recognise the behaviours associated with the pre-professional stage and would enable the teachers to understand not only where they currently are along the teaching professionalism spectrum but also what behaviours they need to model in order to develop as a profession.
As has been emphasised, an important policy would be to ensure the teachers are paid a living wage. An adequate income, well as achieving the primary goal of enabling teachers to focus on teaching, would have the effect of recognising teachers as a skilled professional group. The recognition of ability and promotion according to ability would also encourage the development of a teaching profession. This requires a policy of rewarding performance and ability with salary increases and ensuring the external assessment of ability beyond the School Director rewarding on the basis of his or her relationship with the teachers or simply their seniority.
6.4.3 Determine a measure of quality teaching and set goals
In order to increase teaching quality policies need to focus on what educational and teaching quality means in the context of Cambodia and to develop a set of standards that a competent teacher is expected to meet. These should include an assessment of each teacher’s current abilities and suggested steps to improve the teacher’s current performance. Quality guidelines would provide targets that teachers can aspire to.
In order to be able to provide meaningful teacher assessments and develop relevant teaching goals, the role of the inspectorate staff of MoEYS is critical. MOEYS inspectorate staff will need to first be trained. They need to understand the stages relating to the development of the teaching profession. They need to have the necessary skills to be able to identify the teaching techniques being used and teacher characteristics being displayed in order to accurately identify what any given teacher needs to do in order to improve their capacity. This means an investment in the inspectorate staff of MoEYS is requiredy. One way to do this would be to expose inspectorate staff to different teaching environments where the teaching profession is further developed than in Cambodia.
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An integral part of the development of teachers in their capacity to deliver quality teaching is the provision of timely and constructive feedback to teachers as part of their ongoing development. As a teacher matures as a professional there is also the need for development of an appreciation of the value of self-assessment. Whilst this is a characteristics identified by MoEYS as representative of a quality teacher the teachers did not rank this as being very important. This may be a reflection of the fact that the teachers are working in the pre-professional age as identified by Hargreaves (2000) where teachers are working in an isolated manner using didactic methods without collaborating or self-assessment.
As a necessary part of striving for quality teaching there needs to be a way to discipline poor performing teachers. Teachers that underperform and are absent from school need to be managed and, if necessary, relieved of their duties. Teacher absenteeism has a huge negative impact on the achievement of any country’s education goals.
6.4.4 Link health to education
Education policies must recognise the link between health and education. There is an existing health curriculum but there are no resources provided to actively teach health care. Policies must provide materials and adequate training to enable the health curriculum to be delivered effectively. The schools must be resourced to improve sanitation, provide clean water at schools and supply hygiene materials, including toothbrushes.
Policies need to be designed to deliver health care to the schools. This would involve providing mobile school nurses who visit the schools and review the health of the children. These health nurses could oversee and develop the delivery of the school health curriculum.
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