An Overview of History and Current Situation of Education for Children with Disabilities in Cambodia: A Gray Literature Review

In Cambodia, the private sector has been responsible for educating all children with disabilities.
However, in 2020 the education of children with visual and hearing impairments will be moved to the
public education sector. In this paper we report on historical changes in the Cambodian education
system, the current state of education for persons with disabilities. This report is based on interviews
with Mr. Pen Thavy, materials provided by the Cambodian government, and other supporting
documents. The first turning point in Cambodia’s movement toward educating children with disabilities
was the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on
November 20, 1989. Cambodia ratified this treaty in 1992. The concept of “Education for All” was
adopted into educational policy in Cambodia. The first law directly mentioning education for children
with disabilities was the “Educational law” enacted in 2007. The Schools specialized in education for
children with disabilities are operated by three NGO schools. One is the Krousar Thmey Foundation
which operates 8 schools for children with visual/hearing impairment. Another one is Rabbit-School
which accepted 26 students in the special class, 25 students in the readiness class for children aged
4-to-6 years, 18 students in classes for children with cerebral palsy and 46 students in the integrated
class. The third one is Komar Pilar Foundation which does not have coordination with the government
and is not officially regarded as a school. According to the data which we were given, the total number
of students with all disabilities was 44,759 in primary schools and 6787 in secondary schools in 2017.
This paper is the first report showing the number of children with disabilities in each Cambodian
province. Most common disability was emotional disturbance in primary schools and visual
impairment in junior high schools. The data show that the number of invisible disabilities such as
behavioral disorders, learning disability, intellectual disability and emotional disturbance varied so
much in each province. Misidentification of disabilities can be considered a cause for it.