[{"bbox": [96, 151, 1136, 447], "category": "Text", "text": "months of learning- and the economic capacities of families to keep them in school. Girls, who, on the contrary, outperform boys all along the school years and enrol on-par-with boys in tertiary education, are much less present than boys in technical education and STEM. Generally, enrolment in STEM studies have increased very slowly over the last 5-year period¹⁵, with girls taking the brunt of this situation: there are three boys for every one girl in STEM subjects¹⁶. The current situation severely limits women's engagement in the knowledge-based economy Cambodia aspires to become and contributes to augment the digital divide among sexes. Among the 800,000 workers in the GFT sectors, 80% are women, the majority of whom cannot read and write proficiently. This makes them more vulnerable to redundancy when the sector automates. The huge potential of this large feminine workforce -who has supported the Cambodian “miracle” of the early 2000s- is hampered by low literacy skills, which limits their individual progression from the sewing machine to floor manager and the industry competitiveness at large."}, {"bbox": [96, 471, 449, 499], "category": "Section-header", "text": "* **Quality and relevance of the offer**"}, {"bbox": [96, 499, 1136, 766], "category": "Text", "text": "There is a strong demand from Government to quickly respond to the impact of the COVID pandemic on the economy by attracting foreign direct investment and develop skills for decent work. This means increasing the numbers and diversities of graduates receiving recognised middle-level technician qualifications, as well as higher education graduates. Large programmes funded by ADB loans has slightly raised the numbers of middle-level technicians produced by TVET institutions, but this is still short of demand. COVID economic down-turn has further impacted students' choice to enrol for tertiary education: number of students pursuing degrees have decreased, with an over 50% drop in masters¹⁷. Data -as detailed above- suggest the urgent need to improve the quality and relevance of Cambodian education so as to offer youth the competencies for better job opportunities. This will keep students -boys especially- engaged in learning longer and will encourage -girls especially- to pursue technical subjects and STEM."}, {"bbox": [96, 805, 739, 832], "category": "Section-header", "text": "* **Governance: Cost-efficiency and planning of the education sector**"}, {"bbox": [96, 832, 1136, 1031], "category": "Text", "text": "Volume, equity and efficiency of domestic financing has been assessed, by the GPE's Technical Advisory Panel (ITAP) as a \"high\" priority for the Cambodian education system to achieve its goals. Despite counting on functioning systems, sustainable public debt and low-risk of debt distress, the following blockages are identified¹⁸: eroding education budget (also due to COVID), insufficient volume and efficiency of non-salary recurrent expenditures, poor level of evidence-based proposals for funding to MEF, low disaggregation of data. This leads to the need to increase capacity on data disaggregation, evidence-based funding, projection and modelling, to unblock more funds."}, {"bbox": [96, 1062, 819, 1090], "category": "Section-header", "text": "* **Climate change: Impact and opportunity for the education and skills sector**"}, {"bbox": [96, 1090, 1136, 1514], "category": "Text", "text": "Cambodia is among the top fifteen countries most vulnerable to climate change globally, and among the three most vulnerable in Asia, being exposed to nearly all types of hydro-meteorological hazards. Cambodia may face more severe and unpredictable crisis during the implementation of the action, which may have direct and massive repercussions on the education sector, similar to what COVID has represented in the past years. It is therefore crucial that the education sector, as indicated under \"Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030\", better monitor, understands and is prepared for disaster and its response. Data related to climate change and its impact are not routinely collected in schools. While the action does not target disaster risk reduction among its main objectives, by (IO 2.1) integrating climate-change data into the Education Monitoring Information System (EMIS), i.e. data routinely collected by schools at grass-root level (e.g. on flooding and its consequences) the action seizes the opportunity to support Priority 1 (\"Understanding Disaster risk\") and indirectly Priority 4 (\"Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to \"Build Back Better\" in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction\") of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. Moreover, the curricula do not sufficiently cover climate-change related subjects (both in terms of adaptation and mitigation). More attention to climate change represents also an opportunity for Cambodian's education sector, as the country is cognisant on the need to review school curricula, including for technical education, in order to better serve the needs of an economy that, to stay relevant, must respond to mitigation and adaptation in the years to come."}, {"bbox": [87, 1549, 1030, 1572], "category": "Footnote", "text": "15 From 26.83% to 30.69% of all BS enrolled students between SY 2016/17 and SY 2020/21. (Source: CR 2022)"}, {"bbox": [87, 1573, 254, 1596], "category": "Footnote", "text": "¹⁶ Source: CR 2022."}, {"bbox": [87, 1597, 480, 1623], "category": "Footnote", "text": "¹⁷ Education Congress Report April 2022, p.99."}, {"bbox": [87, 1622, 264, 1646], "category": "Footnote", "text": "¹⁸ ITAP report, p. 14."}, {"bbox": [1038, 1681, 1144, 1706], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 8 of 34"}]