Anchor Moy wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 1:00 pm
@OP You could try the Kampot FB page for things like finding a place to live and checking out what sort of schools are already available in that area, to see if there's a demand and where.

As AM suggests looking what schools are available is important. What are you offering that is not being already supplied? Check out what is presently being supplied to fill gaps by other organizations, for example places like Savong's School, http://www.savong.com/Home/tabid/55/Default.aspx whatever you set up make sure it is both socially and culturally appropriate to your target audience, many NGO type operations, although working in Cambodia failed to escape their native cultural paradigm.

Also it is important to look at what particular demographic you are targeting. Preschool and early education is often out of reach of many children,and remember the opportunity costs for schooling for rural poor in particular can be prohibitive:
While Cambodian children are filling the seats in primary schools, completion rates for primary, and particularly lower secondary education, are low. Poverty pushes many students out of school as many parents, especially in rural areas, cannot afford the direct and indirect costs related to education and families often require children to help at home with chores and field work. https://www.unicef.org/cambodia/3.Education.pdf

There is possibly a niche supplying "child friendly" education to children in the 3 -5 year age group, as the unicef Education Report notes:
........ the staggering lack of preschools in Cambodia, especially in rural areas, means that many children are deprived of this critical education jump start. Although good progress has recently been made, in the 2010/2011 school year, less than 26 per cent of children between the ages of three and five had access to early childhood development opportunities, such as community preschools, home-based education programmes and state preschools. https://www.unicef.org/cambodia/3.Education.pdf

Here's a cached copy of a report on the Education System in Cambodia.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... refox-b-ab

You seem full of good intentions, but also pretty naive. You seem to have no experience in education, other than home schooling your own kids. and you have no experience with Cambodia other than a holiday visit so it seems. So please be careful. The days you could rent a house and run a school are over, at least in Kampot, but I think this is true for the whole of Cambodia these days.

But if you want to go ahead, I strongly suggest you work in Cambodian education yourself for a year, preferably longer, before setting up a school here. Simply because you're heading for disaster if you lack all that experience. If you come to live here, look around, talk to people, and preferably get a (voluntary) job in education, so you will get to know the (extremely difficult) system of Cambodian education with a ministry (MOEYS), provincial offices (POE), local offices (DOE), state schools, private schools, and their respective problems.

Also consider private schools are sprawling everywhere, so you will have fierce competition if you want to go (partly) private. If you want to go public, arrange big funding.

About salary - for a fluent English and Khmer speaking teacher with a license, willing to accompany you in this risky adventure, I think you are looking at 400-800 USD per month, unless you will not use him or her full time and he or she has time for private classes on the side (another big source of income for many teachers). Someone already mentioned the ministry - you need a license to start a school - I am not even sure a foreigner can get a license. In the current climate I doubt it. Not sure what the going rate is, the official rate may be only a few hundred USD, but I strongly suggest you to expect a real price that's 100 times (or more than) that.

Sorry to sound so negative, but the road you want to go is an extremely difficult one.

It all sounds good! How deep are your pockets? Firstly would you want to take your children out of their first class recognised education and their lifestyle. It's not the easiest country to make money. Someone mentioned western NGO, HE at this time seems to be against them. As where you are suggesting to set up, better to teach mandarin if there are any Khmer left in the area in the future.
Even when I was going up to the Thai border from Koh Kong, the Chinese have opened a supermarket in the casino.

Kammekor pretty much nails it.
It is a Hard Place here.

frank lee bent wrote: ↑Wed Jan 10, 2018 4:36 pm Kammekor pretty much nails it.
It is a Hard Place here.

Totally agree, very good advice from Kammekor

I agree too. If you have the skills, try it in your own country.

Last night I had difficulty sleeping, it was pretty cold up here, and I gave your idea another thought. I just wondered what contact(s) I would use if I really wanted to set up my own school.

You are aiming for a Cambodian teacher to support you, fluent in Khmer and English, but I am sure that's not enough for what you need. Cambodia is country with a very strict hierarchy, and even though teachers are highly respected in this system, they hardly have any experience in wheeling and dealing with the higher ranks in education, first the district offices of education, then the Provincial offices, and I am not even talking about the ministry.

I think unless you have at least the support of the provincial office of education of Kampot province your chances of setting up a legal school in Kampot are lower than the temperature in the Sahara Desert two nights ago.

http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/09/afric ... index.html

So my advice is to look for support there, but POE's are not known for their cooperative attitude towards 'outsiders', so it might take you quite a while.

Good luck.

<edit>
If you are really serious about this, look for (foreign) volunteers based in the provincial office of education (they will probably call in POE), most POE's have one, or contact the UNICEF office in Kampot. They are usually helpful and friendly - but no guarantees. They will know the people in the Kampot POE and they will know which person would be good one to start with. They might be able to provide with specific local information you need, before even having an official meeting with anyone about your idea.
</edit>

also edited for typos..

Thanks to all who weighed in.

I definitely plan to spend some time in planning phase rather than implementation/action once we get settled in over there, and I appreciate the ideas (and warnings) folks are passing along, as it reminds me to keep a very open ended time frame in mind as I make plans. Many years ago, before my youngest was born, I lived in India, and if the crazy making pace and process of things on the ground are anything similar, I do understand that patience, flexibility, and an easy spirit help to keep sanity intact.

I DO wish I had some leads for legal advice--I think that's going to be my next priority moving forward.

One thing that somewhat confused me in reading through the responses was the sentiment that I'm "too late in the game"--as I mentioned, I'm looking to facilitate a very small scale alternative learning project, <25 learners maximum, including my own kids, and I'm not seeking to turn a profit. It's hard to imagine that the sentiment of being a day late to the competitive private education scene fits in this scenario.

As for staying in my own country, I'm so excited to be leaving, as are my kiddos. Of course there are things we love here, but the opportunity to learn and grow in another part of the world really resonates with us as well.

meganblossoms wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2018 10:20 am Thanks to all who weighed in.

I definitely plan to spend some time in planning phase rather than implementation/action once we get settled in over there, and I appreciate the ideas (and warnings) folks are passing along, as it reminds me to keep a very open ended time frame in mind as I make plans. Many years ago, before my youngest was born, I lived in India, and if the crazy making pace and process of things on the ground are anything similar, I do understand that patience, flexibility, and an easy spirit help to keep sanity intact.

I DO wish I had some leads for legal advice--I think that's going to be my next priority moving forward.

One thing that somewhat confused me in reading through the responses was the sentiment that I'm "too late in the game"--as I mentioned, I'm looking to facilitate a very small scale alternative learning project, <25 learners maximum, including my own kids, and I'm not seeking to turn a profit. It's hard to imagine that the sentiment of being a day late to the competitive private education scene fits in this scenario.

As for staying in my own country, I'm so excited to be leaving, as are my kiddos. Of course there are things we love here, but the opportunity to learn and grow in another part of the world really resonates with us as well.

I think you are always better off to have done something, even if you dont succeed, you will at least have that experience you can tell your grand-kids of. Your alternative is to sit in your rocking chair in a old folks home and tell everyone of how you had wanted to do ?????? when you were young and fit .
As much as my instinct tells me your a fool for trying to do this, you are a fool thats capable of making your own decisions in life.

Go Mama Go

meganblossoms wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2018 10:20 am Thanks to all who weighed in.

I definitely plan to spend some time in planning phase rather than implementation/action once we get settled in over there, and I appreciate the ideas (and warnings) folks are passing along, as it reminds me to keep a very open ended time frame in mind as I make plans. Many years ago, before my youngest was born, I lived in India, and if the crazy making pace and process of things on the ground are anything similar, I do understand that patience, flexibility, and an easy spirit help to keep sanity intact.

I DO wish I had some leads for legal advice--I think that's going to be my next priority moving forward.

One thing that somewhat confused me in reading through the responses was the sentiment that I'm "too late in the game"--as I mentioned, I'm looking to facilitate a very small scale alternative learning project, <25 learners maximum, including my own kids, and I'm not seeking to turn a profit. It's hard to imagine that the sentiment of being a day late to the competitive private education scene fits in this scenario.

As for staying in my own country, I'm so excited to be leaving, as are my kiddos. Of course there are things we love here, but the opportunity to learn and grow in another part of the world really resonates with us as well.

Even though Cambodia has loads of laws, that doesn't mean things go by the law. Whenever you are dealing with the government here, and you will be dealing with at least three layers of the government in your case, it will take a lot of 'grease' to make the wheels turn - but only if they want the wheel to turn.

For instance, it took CARE about 5-7 years to introduce bi-lingual education in primary grade 1-3 in areas with loads of ethnic minorities. And they are a BIG player in Cambodian education.
UNICEF have been working on Child Friendly schools for well over 10 years now, and even though all the laws have passed, and have been introduced, and have officially been implemented, and teacher training colleges were forced to implement it in their curriculum, my guess is about 25% of the school are more or less working according to 'child friendly school' concept. And UNICEF is probably the biggest player besides the ministry.

There's one thing you seem to overlook that will complicate things for you as far as I think: you are very eager to start that school, but have you considered the Cambodian government officials having a say in this will not be as eager as you?

I guess hat I want to say is.... don't set your hopes too high.