A teacher and her students at Chaktomuk Primary School in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district in February. Hean Rangsey
Minister of Education, Youth and Sport Hang Chuon Naron has informed capital and provincial education department directors about the evaluation and selection of their best school principals, best teachers and cleanest schools in order to nominate them for the Samdech Techo Hun Sen Education Award.
“Every academic year, the ministry evaluates and selects [winners] based on defined principles, criteria and procedures after the capital and provincial education departments send their evaluation results to the ministry,” he said in a letter.
Chuon Naron said the winners will be presented with the awards at an education ministry conference that would be held to review 2019-2020 and set goals for 2020-2021.
In order for the ministry’s evaluation process to take place, the ministry requested that education department directors select candidates for best teacher from grades 4 through 12 along with candidates for best principal and cleanest school based on the definitions and criteria set by the ministry.
Chuon Naron also instructed them to send candidacy lists with evaluation reports attached and to be sure to include evaluation-related documents and videos.
All materials are to be sent to the education ministry’s general secretariat by March 15. The ministry will then evaluate the candidates and make selections for the final phase.
Cambodian Independent Teachers Association (CITA) president Ouk Chhayavy said that each year the awards had inspired school principals to strive to win them. But he pointed out that winning the awards required the participation and cooperation of all of the teachers, students and support staff.
“With the cleanest school contests we see that school principals try really hard to win the awards, despite the extra work making the teachers tired and unhappy, because it helps the school’s reputation.
“But when it comes to the benefits of the awards, the benefits never go towards the teachers in the schools who have had to do most of this work,” he said.
Education ministry spokesman Ros Soveacha said the selection of the best school principals, best teachers and cleanest schools to win awards is only done for public schools.
