Kimcheng Ngel
Cambodian Education Forum
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Innovations and Challenges in Cambodian Education: Youth’s Perspectives
Edited by Kimkong Heng, Koemhong Sol, Sopheap Kaing, and Sereyrath Em
© Cambodian Education Forum 2023
Summary
Shadow education, also known as private tutoring, is a widespread phenomenon across the world, particularly in East Asia. In Cambodia, it is commonly referred to as “extra classes” in English and “rean kour” in Khmer. While there are many articles on shadow education in Cambodia, most seem to revolve around the theme of corruption resulting from this form of education. Therefore, this chapter aims to provide a well-rounded view of issues concerning shadow education. It starts with a brief introduction to the current situation of shadow education in Cambodia and then explains what shadow education is before moving on to discuss some of the main causes of this occurrence. Next, potential benefits and problems resulting from shadow education are discussed. The chapter also offers some suggestions for relevant stakeholders such as students, parents, teachers, school leaders, the government, and policymakers to address this critical issue.
Keywords: Shadow education; private tutoring; causes; benefits; problems; solutions; Cambodia
Introduction
Studying beyond their regular school hours is a part of many students’ daily routines. Shadow education or private tutoring is not a new occurrence. It is especially prevalent in East Asia (OECD, 2014) and has also become the norm in Cambodia (Brehm & Silova, 2014). It is common for parents to send their children to private tutoring, commonly referred to by Cambodians as “extra classes” in English and “rean kour” in Khmer. It usually occurs before or after official school hours. According to Brehm (2016), a perception central to the contemporary education system in Cambodia is the perceived necessity of attending extra classes or private tutoring for students to be able to pass their monthly, semester, and national examinations. Brehm (2016) further noted that private tutoring emerged in the late 1980s or early 1990s in Cambodia. In addition, Bray et al. (2019), who collected data from six schools in Cambodia involving 48 interviews with students, 24 interviews with teachers, and questionnaire responses from 1,274 students and 72 teachers, found that the majority (81.9%) of the sampled students received private tutoring in at least one school subject because it is widely considered necessary for the completion of the government school curriculum.
There is plenty of research on shadow education or private tutoring, as this phenomenon occurs all over the world. While there are many articles on shadow education in Cambodia, most seem to revolve around the themes of corruption and unethical practices in shadow education (see Bray et al., 2019; Brehm & Silova, 2014; Soeung, 2021a). It appears that little has been emphasized on other aspects, such as the benefits and negative impacts of shadow education on students beyond the financial aspect. In fact, shadow education has both benefits and drawbacks. Thus, by understanding both sides, we can maximize its advantages while minimizing its disadvantages.
This chapter aims to discuss shadow education in the Cambodian context. Rather than just focusing on one aspect, this chapter intends to discuss the causes, potential benefits, and problems of shadow education. It also offers some suggestions for relevant stakeholders such as students, parents, teachers, school leaders, the government, and policymakers to deal with shadow education.
What is shadow education?
Stevenson and Baker (1992) defined shadow education as “a set of educational activities that occur outside formal schooling and are designed to enhance the student’s formal school career” (p. 1639). Similarly, Buchmann et al. (2010) referred to shadow education as “educational activities, such as tutoring and extra classes, occurring outside of the formal channels of an educational system that are designed to improve a student’s chance of successfully moving through all the allocation process” (p. 284). Bray and Lykins (2012) explained and defined shadow education as private supplementary tutoring that got its name because it imitates the mainstream school curriculum. It refers to tutoring in academic subjects on the mainstream school curriculum that takes place outside regular school hours and comes with a fee. In this chapter, the terms ‘shadow education’ and ‘private tutoring’ are used interchangeably.
Causes of shadow education
Awareness of the importance of education
World Vision (2021) listed some of the common reasons why education is important. For example, education can help develop communication skills, foster critical thinking skills, build various job qualifications, reduce child mortality, as well as promote gender equality. Because education is so crucial, it is no surprise that people, especially parents, want to invest in it for their children’s future.
Bray and Lykins (2012) noted that the main reason for private tutoring is the awareness of the importance of education and how investing in it can potentially bring great returns. The prevalence of this supplementary tutoring also happens as a result of the tight linkage between education outcomes and career opportunities, as well as social status (Stevenson & Baker, 1992). ‘Time is money’ is a well-known Cambodian saying acknowledging the value of time. The fact that people are willing to invest both their literal money and their metaphorical money and time into education means that they undoubtedly recognize the value of education. When people know the significance of education and how it can bring future returns, they are more willing to invest in it. A significant portion of that investment could go to shadow education.
Transition points in education and national examinations
At certain educational levels in many places, grades may determine which schools the students may attend. Bray and Lykins (2012) explained this point by looking at Singapore, whose secondary education is very stratified, with their primary school grades largely the deciding factors on which future school or tracks they can go to; as a result, many parents invest in supplementary tutoring even at the primary school level. However, in other education systems, the senior year is the major push-out stage, as few post-secondary places are available. As long as post-secondary education stays stratified, with some offering much better benefits than others, private tutoring will remain pervasive in secondary schooling (Bray & Lykins, 2012).
In the case of Cambodia, there are two national examinations that serve as important transition points in education. One is in the 9th grade, and the other is in the 12th-grade examination. The national examination used to be rampant with cheating until the educational reform in 2014 (see Chhay, 2014; NBC News, 2014). In a survey by Kem et al. (2012), 77.7% of the candidates in the 2012 national exam reported that they could copy answers from each other, and 65.8% said they brought cheat notes to the exam rooms. The passing rate, approximately 80% in 2012-2013, plummeted to 26% in the reformed 2014 exam (Maeda, 2021). After the no-cheating policy was introduced, the students had little choice but to study hard to pass their exams (Retka, 2017). Notably, online private tutoring took off in Cambodia after the reform, thanks to the availability of affordable technology (Chhun, 2017). The 12th-grade national exam exerts great pressure on students, as it is the deciding factor in whether they can successfully graduate high school. It can also be considered a sort of university entrance exam, as some universities in Cambodia do not have entrance exams and rely on the score from the Grade 12 national exam to admit students. Getting a good grade on the 12th-grade examination also provides some students with opportunities to get scholarships (see Maeda, 2021).
The importance placed upon the high school’s exiting national exam is also backed by a study by Bray (2016), who collected information from over 1,200 students and 70 teachers from six schools in Siem Reap province, Cambodia. The student participants were students from Grades 9 and 12. He found that nearly 82% of the students surveyed took private tutoring. This pattern is not unique to Cambodia. Similarly, a study in Vietnam by Dang (2007) found that the closer the students were to the final grade of their school level, the more they spent on private tutoring. It is concluded that the pattern of the increase in private tutoring near the final grade of each school level is because of the school-leaving examinations (Dang & Rogers, 2008).
Learning loss that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the fear of national exams, has also caused private tutoring to rise (Bhatta et al., 2022). According to Ngay (2021), one student and her friends from Bak Touk High School, a prominent public school in the capital city of Cambodia, were studying furiously in extra classes (private tutoring classes) to prepare for the 12th-grade national exam. The same student said she was taking six different classes to help with what she had missed during online classes. Similarly, another student from Kampong Cham province said she spent five hours a day on extra classes, which was typical among her classmates, as private tutoring classes were considered an effective way to improve students’ capabilities. She also added that those extra classes had become even more important during the rise of remote learning triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic (Ngay, 2021).
Limited quality of the mainstream schools
Another main reason for private tutoring is the quality or perception of the quality of mainstream schools (Bray & Lykins, 2012). One factor influencing this may be class size. Although existing literature may have some inconsistent conclusions on whether class size has a positive impact on students’ learning, it is generally believed that a smaller class size is better (Bray & Lykins, 2012). According to the findings of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in schools where there were smaller classes, students were more likely to report that their teachers were more flexible and provided more support to students (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport [MoEYS], 2018).
Cambodian public schools’ use of double shift is another factor that drives up private tutoring. Teachers often cite not having enough time to cover the government curriculum as a reason to participate in shadow education (Bray, 2016). Brehm and Silova (2014) found that students and parents alike perceived private tutoring as a necessary extension of public school classes that comes with a financial cost. A common theme that emerged during their focus group discussions, irrespective of whether students were enrolled in private tutoring or not, was that private tutoring helped the students immensely because government schools alone were not enough and that the teachers did not have enough time to teach all the subjects or curriculum (Brehm & Silova, 2014). A double session or double shift system of education allows one group of students to attend school in the morning and another in the afternoon. Other than in Cambodia, this type of school shift is also common in Bangladesh and India (Bray, 2008). However, while this system can improve access to education, especially in places where resources are lacking, it seems that quantity is chosen over quality, as it has been found that this type of system has problems with teaching-learning time (Singadi et al., 2014).
In addition, education has been shifting toward student-centered learning, but this paradigm is not new. In fact, Henson (2003) claimed that learner-centered education has been developing for over five thousand years, crediting Confucius and Socrates as the two of the first educators to emphasize it. Cambodia is no exception to this paradigm shift. MoEYS has endorsed student-centered learning in its policies (MoEYS, 2010). Yet a study by Soeung (2021b) revealed some curious findings. Students, teachers, and administrators alike believed that the learner-based approach they are required to use does not seem to be effective with 12th-grade Cambodian students when it comes to the national examination. This does not necessarily mean that the approach is ineffective, but it might be due to the mismatch between the nature of the learner-centered approach and the national examination (Soeung, 2021b). In a study by Chey and Khieu (2017), it was found that the 2015 national examination’s cognitive domain of the question items was relatively low, mostly focusing on remembering and understanding levels. The questions were designed to implicitly measure students’ capacity to remember instead of measuring students’ ability to apply higher-order thinking, such as to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create new ideas (Chey & Khieu, 2017). For this very reason, a learner-centered approach with its focus on higher-order thinking skills would cause dissonance between the learning approach and the exam. It would then inevitably lead to the rise of private tutoring as teachers could use the more teacher-centered approach that many people, especially students, favor during private tutoring.
Teachers’ low salaries
Dawson (2011) conducted a study on supplementary tutoring in elementary schools in Cambodia by administering written surveys to 197 parents and 72 teachers from four schools in Phnom Penh, two in Kampong Cham, and two in Ratanakiri province. The teachers involved in the study reported that approximately half of their students attended their private tutoring lessons. When asked why they were offering private tutoring, four out of five teachers mentioned their low salaries and the need to increase their income. According to a World Bank report by Benveniste et al. (2008), it was found that teachers in Phnom Penh earned around 1.8 times the per capita poverty line, while their counterparts in remote areas earned 3.7 times. This means that teachers who were breadwinners of their families, particularly those with children, were likely to live in poverty if they relied on their teaching salary alone, especially those living in urban areas (Benveniste et al., 2008). Because of this difficult situation, some researchers hesitated to label the practice of private tutoring as corruption and lay the blame on teachers (Dawson, 2011). Teachers’ salaries have risen since then. However, according to Ouk Chhhayavy, the president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association, the plan to increase salaries from $300 to $318 in 2020 could not offset inflation. Despite that, the government rejected her request to increase teachers’ monthly salaries to about $500 (Khy, 2019). Thus, as long as teachers are still underpaid, shadow education will most likely continue to prosper.
Another factor that is driving up shadow education is social pressure. The value that parents, schools, and even society place on grades plays a major role in the rise of a tuition culture. It is because there is the idea that their grades determine how intelligent a child is and that the way to ensure good grades is through private tutoring (Vora, 2019). Bray and Lykins (2012) explained an interesting phenomenon about how supply is not just a response to demand. In the case of shadow education, supply creates demand instead. With the availability of various private tutoring services and as more and more students participate, other students who have never considered tutoring might have to do so too to avoid being at a competitive disadvantage. Bray and Lykins (2012) also mentioned how tutoring companies in China, South Korea, and Thailand intentionally used aggressive advertising to evoke anxiety in students and parents. They also mentioned how a similar situation existed when teachers provided extra tutoring for their own students (Bray & Lykins, 2012). In Cambodia, except in the New Generation Schools (NGS), many teachers provide extra tutoring to their own students. This could lead to the unethical conduct of the teachers, discussed later in this chapter.
Another fascinating factor is that high academic performance does not mean that the students do not feel pressured. OECD (2017) highlighted a concerning trend whereby students attending high-performing schools may face a greater risk of developing anxiety related to their academic environment. In the case of Singapore, it has been argued that for students to get ahead, not only do they have to do well, but they also have to do better than their peers (Davie, 2017). Thus, it is not surprising that many Singaporean students are anxious about exams and grades (Davie, 2017). All this pressure and anxiety about grades and learning have arguably led many students and parents to seek private tutoring to ease their uneasiness as well as to keep up with other students.
Benefits of shadow education
Academic achievements for students
One of the most anticipated benefits of private tutoring is academic achievement. Bray and Lykins (2012) stated in their review that, based on the research literature, there were mixed findings in terms of the impact of private tutoring on academic achievement. They stated that private tutoring did not always result in positive impacts on academic achievement; nevertheless, there was enough evidence to support the idea that it could have the potential to significantly benefit students’ academic performance.
The mixed findings reported by Bray and Lykins (2012) might be due to the endogeneity of the studies. Dang and Rogers (2008) categorized the research on the impact of private tutoring into two groups: studies that controlled for the indigeneity of private tutoring and those that did not. They found that studies that made efforts to control endogeneity generally found that private tutoring indeed improved students’ academic performance (Dang & Rogers, 2008). Based on this finding, supplementary tutoring can be utilized by low-performing students to catch up with their peers. Having good academic achievement may also improve the students’ self-esteem (Bray & Lykins, 2012). This strategy will benefit not only the students themselves but also the teachers, as it will lessen the burden on the teachers when the class does not have a huge gap in terms of ability.
Extra income for teachers
Other than making their job easier by lessening the gap in the ability of the students in class, private tutoring provides an opportunity for teachers to supplement their low salaries and escape poverty. As mentioned earlier, a major driver of private tutoring is the low salaries of public school teachers. Even though Cambodia has been raising teachers’ salaries in recent years, they are still low (Khy, 2019).
Teachers can make use of their main skill, teaching, to offer private tutoring to supplement their salary. Teaching by itself is already a mentally and emotionally taxing career (Fan, 2021). This way, they may not have to learn a whole new skill set or start their own business, which may take up too much of their time and require a substantial amount of money.
Benefits for the country
In its Education 2030 Framework for Action, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) encourages countries to allocate at least 4% to 6% of their gross domestic product (GDP) to education and/or allocate at least 15% to 20% of their public expenditure to education (UNESCO, 2016). Unfortunately, according to Yesenia and Touch (2017), Cambodia’s 2017 education spending only represented 2.7% of the GDP. In comparison, neighboring Vietnam spent 7% of its GDP on education in the same year. Furthermore, Cambodia’s education expenditure accounted for only 18.3% of government expenditure, which was noticeably short of the ministry’s goal of 23.1% for 2017 (Yesenia & Touch, 2017). It is apparent from these disparities that Cambodia should indeed allocate more funds to education. Private tutoring, in a way, has shifted the financial burden to the people instead of the government. While adding extra pressure on people, it supports underfunded education.
In addition, private tutoring can also help improve human capital. Cambodia’s high economic growth in recent years is due to its low-cost labor; however, the phase of this development is coming to a halt soon as the country is transitioning from a low-skilled labor-intensive model to a skill-driven one (Thomas, 2019). How can one transform unskilled labor into skilled labor? The key is, without a doubt, education (Heng & Sol, 2022). As stated earlier, private tutoring can have a significant impact on students’ achievement, thereby helping them become better human resources in the future, which will benefit the whole country, especially as Cambodia lacks skilled workers (Soth, 2022).
Problems of shadow education
Financial burden
While public K-12 schools in Cambodia are free, private tutoring generally costs money. While the fees vary from place to place, according to one study conducted with 9th graders and 12th graders in Siem Reap province by interviewing 48 students and collecting 1,274 questionnaire responses from students, 64.9% agreed and 19.3% strongly agreed that the costs were a financial burden to their families. Only 15.8% stated that private tutoring was not a financial burden (Bray et al., 2019). Soeung’s (2021b) study, which was based on descriptive data from 93 Grade 12 students and in-depth interviews with informants who were tutees and their parents, tutors, and school administrators, found that households spent a monthly average of about $10 to $25 per child for private tutoring, excluding English language tutoring. That amounted to around $120-$300 annually per child, disregarding any expenses incurred for English language tutoring. To put this into perspective, according to the Census and Economic Information Center (2020), Cambodia’s annual household income per capita was around $1,539.767 in December 2020. It can be clearly seen that private tutoring is indeed a huge financial burden, consuming a considerable portion of the income of many households.
Social inequalities
As mentioned earlier, a lot of money is needed to fund shadow education. It comes as no surprise that a recurrent theme in Bray and Lykan’s (2012) study was that private tutoring perpetuated and intensified social inequalities. It is obvious that wealthier families are able to acquire greater quantities and better qualities of supplementary tutoring than those with fewer financial resources. Brehm and Silova (2014) also seconded this idea. They stated that access to private tutoring required a fee; thus, it became a mechanism of stratification in society by creating a division between low-income families and the more capable ones. This hinders equal access to quality education for those from lower-income backgrounds, limiting their academic success, social mobility, and future job opportunities (Brehm & Silova, 2014).
On the other hand, Dang and Rogers (2008) argued that household-financed tutoring does not necessarily increase social inequalities. They emphasized that while productive tutoring may provide a slight advantage to children from financially well-off or more educated families, these households are already providing their children with educational benefits in numerous other ways, such as access to more learning resources, equipment, and full-time private schooling, among others. They also contended that if the ban on private tutoring were to be implemented, the well-off householders would simply redirect their expenses to other types of educational investments. In some cases, private tutoring might help lessen the inequalities by enabling children from disadvantaged households to compete with counterparts from private schools. Instead of banning private tutoring, the government could target underperforming students and implement strategies to improve equity (Dang & Rogers, 2008). Therefore, it can be concluded that while private tutoring can increase social inequalities, it is not always the case and can even be used to reduce them.
Impacts on students’ well-being
Private tutoring can add extra hours to students’ studying time and may take over students’ free time to do other unwinding activities. Furthermore, not being able to participate in or afford private tutoring might also result in students being treated differently by their teachers, such as getting low scores or even failing the subject entirely (Brehm & Silova, 2014; Dang & Rogers, 2008). All of these can take a toll on students’ well-being. This issue has not received as much attention as it should, as evidenced by the lack of direct studies on the well-being of Cambodian students in relation to private tutoring or shadow education. To understand this factor, we may look at some studies on a country with very active shadow education, Korea.
Kyung-don (2020) and Woo (2020) reported the findings from the annual survey conducted by the National Statistics Korea and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on Korean youths aged 9 to 24. It was found that 74.8% of the participants received private education outside of public schools. On average, they spent 6.5 hours per week on private tutoring. The survey also revealed that about 40% of middle and high school students reported feeling stressed, whereas 28.2% stated experiencing a sense of depression more than once within the past year (Kyung-don, 2020; Woo, 2020). On average, high school students slept for 6 hours, but 46% of them slept less than that. The same survey also showed that many students lacked physical exercise, especially high school students, as only 40.1% engaged in regular exercise more than once per week (Woo, 2020). Other than the lack of sleep and exercise, other problems were also reported. Mundy (2014) recounted that a study conducted in the previous year examined children in a wealthy district in Seoul and found that almost one in seven suffered from the curvature of the spine, which was more than double the rate compared to 10 years ago. Furthermore, at least 75% of Seoul’s high school students were myopic, and physicians were spotting more and more youth with turtleneck syndrome (Mundy, 2014). In addition to the implications for physical health, there were also consequences for emotional and mental health. A poll of 5,669 Korean middle and high school pupils conducted by the state-run National Youth Policy Institute found that nearly one in three Korean middle and high school pupils had thought about suicide over the previous year due to academic burden (Yoo, 2021). Moreover, a study by Lee (2014), which used panel data regression to gauge the effect of time spent on private tutoring on the multidimensional well-being of over 6,000 Korean students aged 10-16 from 2003 until 2008, showed that the hours of tutoring had negative impacts on various domains of well-being such as study-related stress, health, and overall life satisfaction. These results underscore the presence of a clear shadow cost of shadow education, manifested as reduced well-being among students.
In comparison, the study by Soeung (2021b) found that Cambodian 12th graders in the social science strand spent about 40 hours on private tutoring per month, whereas their peers in the science strand spent about 100 hours each month. From this, we can say that, on average, they spent around 70 hours per month, or approximately 16 hours per week, which far exceeded the number of hours spent by the average Korean students. However, it is worth noting that most Cambodian public schools practice a double-shift curriculum; therefore, their official regular study hours are shorter than those of Korean student. This means that while Cambodian students spend less time during regular schooling, they spend much more on private tutoring.
All of these highlight how the race for academic achievement, which heavily involves private tutoring, can bring a huge cost to students beyond the financial aspect. Even worse, while this pressure to take private tutoring often comes from parents and society, not out of their own choices, the students have to bear the cost of their mental health and well-being. Based on the findings of Soeung (2021b), Cambodian students may be at risk of suffering from physical and mental deterioration, considering the huge amount of time spent on receiving private tutoring.
Impacts on public school improvement
Bray and Lykins (2012) brought up an aspect that might be overlooked. That is, while private tutoring and public education might appear complementary, it is only for the short run. They argued that it might pose an obstacle to the improvement of public schools in the long run. The reason is that the availability of tutoring might decrease parents’ interest in lobbying for improvement in public education, especially for well-off parents who can afford high-quality private tutoring (Bray & Lykins, 2012). They even added that those urban elites might even fear that the improvement of public schools could take away their children’s advantage because when other children are able to receive a quality education through mainstream schooling, it would mean the competition for opportunities would be even stronger. This is why the private tutoring market may alleviate political pressure for reform and quality improvement in public schools (Bray & Lykins, 2012).
Unethical behavior and corruption
One of the most common themes in research related to shadow education is unethical behavior and corruption (see Bray et al., 2019; Brehm & Silova, 2014; Soeung, 2021a). These issues not only pose problems in themselves, but they can also undermine the potential benefits of shadow education, rendering most of the benefits practically useless despite the hefty financial costs involved.
Jayachandran (2014) claimed that in developing nations, some teachers engage in unethical practices by forcing their public school students to take private tutoring lessons with them or even deliberately leaving out certain parts of the curriculum from regular class hours and only teaching those particular portions during their tutoring sessions. Some teachers also show favoritism toward certain students who pay a fee for their private tutoring (Dang & Rogers, 2008).
A more recent study conducted by Bray et al. (2019) elaborates on this issue in the Cambodian context. During interviews, 16 out of 24 teachers denied omitting important components from government classes on purpose and only teaching them during private tutoring lessons, although some acknowledged having done so at some points in the past. Students who were interviewed also mentioned this issue. It was a typical comment among the students that in the government class, there were many exercises for subjects like biology. Therefore, if they were not to attend private lessons, they would not understand and be unable to solve the problems during the exam. Three students even mentioned that their teacher did not allow them to do exercises during the government class, even if they had enough time. Teachers would let the students leave the class early, implying that if they wanted to practice the exercises, they should come to the private tutoring classes. Furthermore, some teachers would cover the curriculum in their private tutoring classes ahead of the government class as a form of indirect marketing because it appeared that tutored students performed better than others during regular classes. Even worse, sometimes teachers would deliberately inflate the scores of the tutored students, as acknowledged by one teacher in the study (Bray et al., 2019).
Soeung (2021b) also found that the main driver of tutoring demand was uncaring pedagogies. Although the majority (about 84%) of the respondents disagreed with a statement that teachers demanded that their students take tutoring with them, they agreed that teachers often shortened lessons by only presenting some parts, such as theory and formula, while leaving out some other parts of the lesson and reducing the practice time, individual interaction, and question time. These uncaring pedagogies seemed to align with what Bray et al. (2019) mentioned in their study. This uncaring, unethical, and corrupt way of teaching is detrimental to the students. It hinders students from getting what is rightfully theirs: a complete education.
Solutions
For students and parents
Education is indeed crucial, but one needs to be careful not to overdo it. More time and money spent on education does not necessarily mean the person will learn more. Students’ well-being must equally be taken into consideration. Additionally, forcing students to study for long hours might just make them despise learning. This sentiment is also echoed by Magdaline and Begam (2016), who did a study on 300 students from a district in India. They discovered that forcing students to attend various tuition and other coaching classes not only creates hatred toward education but also affects their well-being.
It is not a negative practice for students to seek help with subjects they have trouble with, but they should be selective by only choosing the subjects they struggle with instead of resorting to private tutoring on every subject. Additionally, alternatives to private tutoring, such as self-studying or peer study groups, should be explored. Students should learn to be more independent in their learning by making use of educational resources, especially various online resources. They should also get together in study groups and take turns teaching the subjects they are good at to their less-able peers. This would benefit not only the students getting taught, but the ones doing the teaching would also gain a deeper understanding (see Fiorella & Mayer, 2013).
Parents and students alike must not participate in or enable corruption in education. It renders the very purpose of education pointless if people let the corruption continue. If the reason for abetting corruption is to support teachers’ low salaries, there are better ways to help, such as advocating for salary raises.
Parents should care more about their children instead of only focusing on their academic performance. Parents also need to stop the practice of constantly comparing their children with those of others. This practice can be detrimental to children’s self-esteem and perpetuate the cycle of vicious competition (Durga, n.d.; Gürel & Brummelman, 2020). Indeed, educational success is important, but it should not overtake the children’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
For teachers
Educators have a responsibility to set a positive example for students because their actions and behaviors directly influence their students’ views on education. There is nothing wrong with offering honest tutoring as remedial or enrichment for students. Nonetheless, it should provide genuine benefits to students rather than merely serve as a means to make extra income. One should not withhold information and knowledge on purpose during regular school hours as a way to force students to attend private tutoring because coercion and other academic misconduct undermine everything education stands for. It should have no place in education in any form. The various underhand dealings by teachers harm all students, whether or not they are enrolled in private tutoring. Uncaring or half-hearted teaching forces students to waste their time studying the same thing twice, once during official school hours and once more during private tutoring. Thus, it is inefficient and wasteful, as it costs not only money but also time. Students who undeservedly achieve high grades or scores as a result of paying money get only superficial bragging rights but no real academic benefits, while at the same time serving as a demotivating factor for students who do not or cannot take private lessons. When grades and scores are no longer an indicator of student performance but instead just something that can be easily bought with money, a diploma will turn into a meaningless piece of paper. It undermines the integrity of education and makes students lose faith in education and become cynical. Teachers should, therefore, be the first-line defenders of academic integrity, not tear it down. To gain respect, they need to conduct themselves in a manner that shows that they deserve it.
For the government, policymakers, and school leaders
The government and policymakers are the ones who can make changes at the macro level. If the government is willing to address the issue of private tutoring, it must look into the root causes that contribute to its prevalence. Unquestionably, more funding needs to be allocated to education and educational research to improve the overall quality of the education system in Cambodia.
Moreover, the national examinations also need improvement. As can be seen with the case of the New Generation Schools (NGS), despite being able to eliminate teachers’ engagement in shadow education, it has not been able to entirely omit students’ participation in it due to the quality of the schools as well as the examination pressure (Nhem, 2022). While commendable educational reforms have been introduced, such as the no-cheating policy and NGS initiatives, the national examinations remain largely unchanged. The exam should go beyond testing lower-thinking skills, as this would perpetuate the outdated teacher-centered approach and prevent students from developing crucial 21st-century skills. Moreover, to curb anxiety and pressure, instead of conducting one single high-stakes exam, formative assessments should be considered in determining final grades. However, this solution may increase the risk of corruption at the class or school levels. If academic integrity can be ensured, formative assessments would not only lessen exam anxiety but also increase students’ engagement with their daily classes.
In addition, school leaders, acting as intermediaries between teachers and policymakers, should work closely with both groups to monitor and address teachers’ misconduct while at the same time working to improve the curriculum and examinations and to advocate for well-deserved salaries and benefits to attract and retain qualified teachers. The quality of mainstream schooling is a major reason for the rise of private tutoring. To promote quality education, attention should be paid to teachers, who are an indispensable part of education. Choi (2014) compared how vastly different two of the world’s best education systems (Korea and Finland) are. Choi (2014) found that they had one thing in common, i.e., a deep respect for teachers and their academic accomplishments. While teachers do not enter the profession with the aim of being wealthy, they should not have to live near or barely above the poverty line, given the importance and skill requirements of their jobs. Providing educators with well-deserved compensation in terms of salaries and other benefits, as well as raising the prestige of the job, will undoubtedly attract more talented individuals into the profession. With more qualified teachers available, the government may get rid of double-shift classes, reduce the teacher-student ratio to improve the quality of education, and gain the trust of parents and other concerned stakeholders.
Conclusion
The rise of private tutoring implies the value people place on education, but it can also be a sign of distrust in mainstream schooling. It is great that people recognize the importance of education and are willing to invest their time and hard-earned money into it. However, as its other name, “extra class,” suggests, private tutoring should be an extra or an add-on, not a compulsory, part of education. While it is perfectly understandable that some students may need extra academic help, they should be in the minority, not the majority, because that would mean there are serious problems with the educational system.
As previously discussed, shadow education has its benefits. Private tutoring, free from corruption, has the potential to help both low- and high-performing students soar to greater heights. As this phenomenon is deeply rooted in society and with the academic competition growing more and more fierce both domestically and internationally, it is unlikely that private tutoring will be eradicated any time soon. That is why all stakeholders need to work together to reduce potential problems and maximize academic benefits.
No doubt, more research is needed to get the whole picture of the current situation of shadow education in Cambodia in order to implement effective policies. Moreover, research efforts should focus on how to improve the overall quality of education and develop more valid and reliable assessments. The answers to these complex questions will not be found easily and will require a never-ending, ongoing process. Through trial and error as well as rigorous research, hopefully, our education system will get closer and closer to a world-class education. However, there is one thing that is certain: if corrupted shadow education continues to be considered an essential part of public education, that means public education has arguably failed its people.
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