Community scorecard and a class birthday

Today Silas Everett from the Asia Foundation came to speak to the Grade 4/5 students about Cambodian schools. The Asia foundation works in many different countries in Asia.

The students identified problems they have seen in some Cambodian schools.

• high class sizes
• small rooms, facilities
• fewer teachers / paid less
• Teachers may be late or not come to work
• students have less hours of instruction
• students may need to pay more for tests. 
• sometimes there are limited resources like books, tables, chairs
• no air conditioning - rooms can be very warm.

The students watched a video and thought about the lives of some school age children. 

Many need to work at home collecting water, doing household chores and caring for animals. 

Many also need to do some paid work to help the family. They may sell items or do tailoring work to get extra money for the family.

One way the Asia foundation helps school is by helping them assess their school and community using Community scorecards. 

The Grade 4/5 students became familiar with the scorecard by doing the activity assessing ISPP. 

They considered everything that is important in a school and made lists. Then they gave each point a rating from 1 (excellent)-5 (need to improve). If something was a high score the students thought about how it could improve. 

Who is responsible? 

What can they do do - action? 

The Asia foundation has worked with 200 Cambodian schools using the scorecards. 

All members of the school community are involved in improving the school.

After all our hard work this morning we came back and helped Ellie celebrate her 11th birthday.