Education In Cambodia With Casey Barnett, President Of CamEd Business School – Industry Update

on Jul, 10 2024

The first episode of B2B Cambodia's 'Industry Update' centres on Cambodia's education industry with Casey Barnett, President of CamEd Business School.

Since founding CamEd Business School over two decades ago, Barnett has established himself as a leading figure in Cambodia's higher education scene and today continues to head the institution as one of the leading business universities in the Kingdom.

Notable Developments And Trends In Cambodia's Education Sector

One of the main developments Barnett has observed in Cambodia's education industry is the growth of private education, resulting from the Cambodian government's openness to privately-run educational institutions.

“What impresses me the most is really the power of private education, private schools, private universities," said Barnett.

Because of the openness of the Cambodian government to allow and encourage investment in private educational institutions and private schools, now we see private schools, in every small town and every small city, and this has really given parents a choice not to be limited only to the government run schools in their town or their neighborhood. They also have easy, affordable access to private education, and the private education can often be of better quality and more specialised.

Barnett also noted an increasing trend to study English among Cambodian students, further attributing the improvement of English fluency levels to the higher quality of private schools.

“It's possible for students now, increasingly, since the year 2000, to study Cambodian at the Cambodian school in the morning, and then study English and other subjects in the afternoon. This has really been an increasing trend, to the point that now the young Cambodian students who have graduated from high school and come to [CamEd] for higher education, are speaking fluent English. They're so smart and talented, and this is really a result of the growth in private education,” he said.

He also went a step further to say that English skills among young people are likely higher in Cambodia than in neighbouring countries like Thailand or Vietnam, particularly because of the higher need for English in Cambodia's economic context.

“English now, and increasingly, has almost become a necessity for working, especially with an international company in Cambodia – in Vietnam and Thailand, that's not the case,” Barnett stated.

In Thailand, you can really speak Thai in the workplace and you don't need English, as well as in Vietnam, but in Cambodia it's really a necessity. I think it's because Cambodia is a small open economy, so I think it's going to always be the case that we really need to have strong English skills here in Cambodia.

Barnett further added that there is now an increasing trend and demand among students to study Chinese.

“I do have a lot of companies coming to CamEd, to my school, asking for Chinese speaking graduates, and they're willing to pay a premium for them,” he said.

Favourable Government Policies For The Development Of Cambodia's Education Sector

In addition to the Cambodian government's openness to private education, Barnett identified the increase of teacher salaries at public schools as one thing that he believes has impacted the education sector the most.

Paying teachers better and higher wages really helps to attract higher quality teachers to the public education system.

Another area he mentioned the government is doing a great job in is quality assurance, as they have now developed accreditation standards and an accreditation process to review and monitor private schools as well as public schools.

How Is Higher Education In Cambodia Responding To Demand Trends In The Market?

Barnett shared that in the context of his own school, he has observed a growing demand for accounting, tax, auditing and finance graduates in the market, which he saw as being originally driven by international companies.

“It was the case for the first 20 years that I was here in Cambodia that audit was really more driven by the international investors or companies that wished to have this level of assurance,” he said. “It was also driven by the finance sector as the National Bank of Cambodia, banks, microfinance institutions, needed to have a higher level of financial accounting and financial reporting systems and audits.”

But a new law on accounting and audit was issued in 2016, and in the past several years, the accounting and auditing regulator (ACAR) has been enforcing compliance with accounting and auditing standards, which is something very new.

He added that although ACAR has existed since 2002, the regulator was taking more of an educational approach and are only in recent years beginning to fully enforce the law. Companies that do not adhere to accounting and auditing regulations are subsequently being charged significant penalties.

Since 2013, there's also been a lot of reform in the tax department, and the tax department has been driving a higher level of compliance too, so these two things are really making accounting, auditing and tax an important skill and drawing a lot of our graduates. We see high demand in this area and this is going to continue for the next several years.

Watch Part 2 of our discussion with Barnett on Cambodia's education industry:

Assessment Of The Current State Of Public Education In Cambodia

Barnett gave a positive assessment of Cambodia's developing education sector, noting that there is “universal access to the public education system, and the public education system has been receiving increasing budget."

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports is already one of the largest recipients of national budget… and the salaries of teachers has increased, which increases the quality of teachers.

However, one aspect he said the public education sector in Cambodia is still missing is performance evaluation of teachers.

There needs to be significant, systematic evaluation of public school teachers. And teachers that are not good, they need to be fired. Teachers that are good need to receive incentives. And I think if there is a policy of firing bad teachers, replacing them with good teachers, that is going to create pressure for better performance, and better performance is going to benefit the whole country in terms of improved education.

“If you have a good teacher, it doesn't really matter how [a school's] facilities are. Nothing else matters if you have a really high quality teacher to guide and develop skills in a student,” he stressed.

Barnett added that he believes visa restrictions and quotas on foreign workers can tend to exacerbate this issue as it limits the number of quality teachers that can enter the country to help raise standards and skills.

“Unfortunately, there are some challenges now with the Ministry of Labour, and also the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Department of Immigration, regarding the issuance of visas. Because many times, the skills are not available here in Cambodia, so we need teachers and educators from the US, from India, from other countries. But the quota on foreign workers, any restrictions, any limitations that slow down bringing foreign teachers to Cambodia – whether it be a restriction of visas employment licenses, work permits for foreigners… – the result is it's just hurting Cambodian education," said Barnett.

So I am advocating that these restrictions on foreigners in Cambodia really need to be eliminated, at least for teachers, so foreign [teachers] are allowed to come here freely and easily with visas and work permits.

He also shared a very positive view of Cambodian students today, stressing the high quality work they produce even in comparison to foreign students.

My personal observation of students nowadays in Cambodia, they're very talented, they're very smart. they're very self confident. They're more proactive than they were 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. So I'm very happy that education, really, is improving.

“I have done accreditation of universities in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and also here at CamEd do we have students from Cambodia, Korea, Japan, China, Ukraine, and our number one students are always Cambodian,” he added. “If I compare our students with those in Thailand and Vietnam, I'm more impressed with our students. But this is my perspective from CamEd, maybe it's just that CamEd has the best students, so my perception is a bit biased.”

Vocational Training Vs. Higher Education – Aligning With Skills Demand In The Market

The Cambodian government and Ministry of Labour have increasingly pushed to offer more Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) opportunities, especially for underprivileged communities. Barnett sees this as a positive development, but added that he thinks there is sometimes a misunderstanding about the gap between higher education and vocational training.

“There is a trend in the last 20 years where higher education in universities regard themselves as vocational training. So actually what we do here at CamEd, even though our [university] qualifications include bachelor's degrees, master's degrees as well as other professional qualifications, we regard ourselves as preparing students for a vocation,” he said.

We don't create a separate system of vocational education, rather, we should take the existing university system and ensure that the university system is training people for vocations.

Barnett added that most employers don't look for vocational certificates and often seek bachelor's and master's degrees, as there is still no standard for vocational certification. However, he did note that the pathway to a bachelor's degree might be too long and not be appropriate for all students, especially those in mechanics, manufacturing and tourism, so separate vocational training still has an important role to play.

It's really hard to predict what skills are going to be needed by employers, so if you pour money into computer science, for example, developing computer hardware, and you're teaching people how to develop computer hardware, maybe all that money would would be wasted because Cambodia doesn't have an industry, there might not be opportunities for those graduates to work on such a project. So you really need to align with the market, align with the reality of the demand for skills in Cambodia. Otherwise, there might be a mismatch.

Future Of The Cambodian Education Sector

Barnett emphasised that most of all, positive economic development results in greater education completion rates and improvement overall.

I think that people will stay in school if they see school as a path to career, and a path to earning money, so the most important thing for improving education and improving school completion is growing the economy.

Looking forward, he feels positive about the future development of education in Cambodia, once again reiterating his belief in the free market and competition in private education.

“I'm very positive because I've seen that the education sector in Cambodia has been very proactive in improving quality. I believe that a lot of the improvements in quality are from the free market, so parents are free to choose one school to another, especially with private education, and this competition puts pressure on all private schools. If they want to stay in business, they need to improve their quality, so I see that competition has been very important in driving innovation and improvement in quality,”concluded Barnett.