by Guest9999 » Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:32 pm
Cambodian teachers, doctors and nurses, in general, have much higher skills than 30 years ago, and there are many more of them. While education and healthcare service quality is (far) lower than we might wish, and certainly not equitably distributed, the improvement is clear and easy to see.
The problem, in both healthcare and education, is how the Public/Private sectors, have evolved to interact. Public services are willfully sabotaged to increase income from private services. Everyone knows this, we all saw it evolving, and the genie won't be going back into the bottle.
Individuals needed to supplement meagre income, so all let it slide, but as public income rose, there was no easy way to tell/force them to stop. At the level of individual practitioners who work in both the public and private spheres, it is bad enough. but when a school or clinic owner is also in higher level state services it is more insidious still.
That brings me back to an earlier point, the most successful institutions in the Private realm, those with more than sufficient cash and not worried about diluting their elite brand, really should give back to the Public realm.
(I don't want to praise ACE too much, they can afford to do much more, but their facilitation of the yearly teacher conference, CAMTESOL, is an example of something that increases their status and tries to raise all boats. Clap, clap clap. Could Phnom Penh's biggest private hospitals do something similar? Launch an annual Tropical Infectious Disease Health Symposium, with MOH on the same page of course. [Teachers are poor, so doing it in PP makes most sense. Khmer doctors and health scientists (if they exist yet?) are more rich, I think they should hold it in Siem Reap. USA, France, China, and the EU would compete to fund it.] Good idea?)
Cambodian teachers, doctors and nurses, in general, have much higher skills than 30 years ago, and there are many more of them. While education and healthcare service quality is (far) lower than we might wish, and certainly not equitably distributed, the improvement is clear and easy to see.
The problem, in both healthcare and education, is how the Public/Private sectors, have evolved to interact. Public services are willfully sabotaged to increase income from private services. Everyone knows this, we all saw it evolving, and the genie won't be going back into the bottle.
Individuals needed to supplement meagre income, so all let it slide, but as public income rose, there was no easy way to tell/force them to stop. At the level of individual practitioners who work in both the public and private spheres, it is bad enough. but when a school or clinic owner is also in higher level state services it is more insidious still.
That brings me back to an earlier point, the most successful institutions in the Private realm, those with more than sufficient cash and not worried about diluting their elite brand, really should give back to the Public realm.
(I don't want to praise ACE too much, they can afford to do much more, but their facilitation of the yearly teacher conference, CAMTESOL, is an example of something that increases their status and tries to raise all boats. Clap, clap clap. Could Phnom Penh's biggest private hospitals do something similar? Launch an annual Tropical Infectious Disease Health Symposium, with MOH on the same page of course. [Teachers are poor, so doing it in PP makes most sense. Khmer doctors and health scientists (if they exist yet?) are more rich, I think they should hold it in Siem Reap. USA, France, China, and the EU would compete to fund it.] Good idea?)