Letter to the editor (Academic Fraud in Cambodia)

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Sam Rany

Dear LIFT,

Having read your article “On the cheating chain” (LIFT 133, August 1, 2012), I would like to express my sincere appreciation for its intention to tell high school students well as relevant stakeholders in the education sector to have an urgent look at our education system. This includes students themselves as well as parents, teachers, and governmental ministries. It is undeniable that cheating and bribery in exams are still happening at every level of the education system and students think that their behaviour is normal practice.

Consequently, many local and international newspapers have regularly reported controversial and shameful cases of fraud during secondary and high school’s national examinations. How does cheating impact on our educational quality and national reputation? How can we abolish the culture of this negative performance?

Honestly, I was shocked to read the result finding of a recent study assumed that “cheating plagues the educational system” and “discredits degrees earned in the Kingdom”. I totally agree with Mr. Thav Nimoul, a teacher at Dongkor secondary school, who said that cheating will seriously affect our reputation on the international stage because of unqualified fresh graduates. As we know, Cambodia has a firm commitment to compete with other ASEAN state members and to integrate her system into its community in 2015. To achieve this goal, tighter laws on academic fraud should be adopted to prevent this illegal cheating in order to raise the quality of education in this country.

Moreover, teachers and parents should discourage and punish their students and children to make them abandon this habit.

Ultimately, I strongly believe that our government ministries should pay more attention to such matters, and take measures to establish mechanism to prevent and to punish all forms of academic fraud in our education system.

Kind regards,

Sam Rany