Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

Of ICC’s 30 literacy teachers, only a third are women in spiteof their efforts to find women and their acceptance of lessqualified women.Material production has until now been entirely dependenton ICC. Both the POEYS and ICC recognize this is not agood situation, and so are taking measures to address thisshortfall. The POEYS is allowing the new coordinator of thebilingual NFE classes to be trained in material production,teacher training, and monitoring. ICC is also taking measuresto decentralize material production. An increased amountof reading material is being produced by students andfacilitators, themselves, which should be expected from the © POEYSPOEYS bilingual education classes when they enter theirsecond phase of the project. By the end of this year, ICC together with POEYS hopes to trial “VillageMaterial Production Centres” in three locations in the province. Further cooperation with other NGOs isalso hoped to provide more stakeholders of Bunong material production and use.Although there is a common view that bilingual education has the potential to provide a bridge tolearning in the national language and help preserve minority languages, there is also a strong pressureto quickly move into the national language. The risk is that the bridge would lack a firm foundation in themother tongue and that the benefits for acquiring the second language would be less than optimal.RecommendationsOne year of implementing pilot bilingual literacy classes has allowed the POEYS to see the value andthe importance of bilingual education in a province of mostly minority groups. The POEYS has started tonotice the potential impact on the communities and the need to continue working with the communitiesto adapt the programme to be most suitable to the needs of the participants.With a lack of Bunong staff in the POEYS, the close working relationship with ICC will need to continuein order to receive expertise about the Bunong language and materials. Although limited in time, theBunong POEYS staff should continue to work closely with ICC to acquire necessary skills for runningbilingual literacy classes.The initial teacher training allowed for one week to learn the Bunong orthography, getting familiar withreading and writing Bunong, and learning how to use the materials. The programme organizers foundthis initial training period to be too short. It has now been extended to ten days for the newly selectedteachers who will be teaching the second phase. The POEYS and ICC will try to work out a plan to morepractically share experiences and feedback from the communities.The Royal Government of Cambodia is determined to work toward the goals of the EFA. The alarmingstatistics of the very low numbers of minority children accessing education in Mondulkiri calls for theGovernment to act specifically, targeting the needs of the minority communities. When building educationprogrammes, they need to be based on the linguistic and environmental needs of the communities.Bilingual education is therefore the most viable means for the minority people of Cambodia to accesseducation and, consequently, progress in the wider Cambodian society.[ 69 ]