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Address at the
Degrees Conferment Ceremony for Pedagogical Graduates (Bachelor Degree +
1) of the 14th-15th Batch and Khmer-French
Language Pedagogical Students (12 + 2) of the 11th-12th Batch
Phnom Penh,
December 6th, 2010
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Board of Management, Teachers,
Professors,
Dear Pedagogical Students!
Today, my wife and I are extremely pleased to attend the
Conferment of Degrees to 1280 pedagogical students who have successfully
completed their studies. In this auspicious event, I would like to
sincerely congratulate and admire the board of management, teachers,
professors, education personnel of the National Institute of Education
for making their utmost efforts to carefully educate and train our next
generation of youth through knowledge transfer for the cause of human
resource development in Cambodia. The prideful outcome that the National
Institute of Education and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports
has achieved so far not only answers appropriately and timely to Royal
Government’s policy and need of the nation with respect to human
resource development, but also attains sustainable development of
intellectual resource, improving economic efficiency and reduce poverty
of our people.
Indeed,
for the last several years, we had paid great attention to the education
sector, especially training of teachers, human resource development,
ensuring skill upgrading in order to answer to the demand of regional
and national labor market. In parallel, both public and private human
resource development centers in Cambodia have remarkably developed, and
the number of graduates has also notably increased. Obviously, today we
have 1,280 pedagogical students and graduates trained by the National
Institute of Education.
Taking
this opportunity, I would like to recall our effort in restoring and
developing pedagogically qualified teachers from the scratch. Indeed,
the National Institute of Education has made a huge contribution to the
training and development sector in accordance with the national
development trend, and has achieved glorious result since 1979 until
now. Since 1979, the institute has been running pedagogical courses to
supplement teaching profession, management and other relevant skills to
about 30,000 teachers. At the same time, the institute has commenced
conducting long-term training course, as result it has trained high
school teachers, the so called tertiary education teachers, intermediary
and primary education inspectors, primary education teachers, primary
Khmer-French and Khmer-English language teachers, French language
instructors and primary education instructors, in a total amount of
about 10, 000 teachers since 1993. Along with this, since 2007 the
institute has adopted new curriculum by using scientific experimentation
and researches, operational activities and science fair of pedagogical
students in addition to Information Technology subject for all, i.e.
every student must be capable of using computer with Unicode programme
for teaching respective specialization after having graduated to be
professional teachers.
Most
importantly, the National Institute of Education has been teaching
pedagogical students to know how to learn, practice, know themselves, to
be harmonized as well as to be proud of their own achievements. These
factors will be deeply mainstreamed in our education sector in the
following phase, and eventually our society will benefit from such
efforts.
In
response to the achievement made so far, on behalf of the government,
myself and my wife, I would like to highly value and profoundly
compliment the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, the board of
management, personnel, all teachers and professors of all education
institutes for promoting human resource development by making utmost
efforts in developing this institute as it is today. Moreover, the
institute has the ability to train teachers to have full capacity, to be
professional teachers of ethics and high responsibility.
Indeed,
the world is currently in the information technological age with endless
fast growing trend which require us to develop our education sector,
especially by improving its quality by two folds because if this sector
has no quality then our society will face a primary challenge, which is
the development of human resources; and it will impact the development
of our country, impact our national economic competitive advantages and
our efforts will be in vain as all the costs including spirits and
finance will be wasted through the lack of good quality education
system. In addition, we also cannot improve our standard of living and
our economic conditions if we do not have high quality workforce. In
this regard, in the past I have attentively followed up with this sector
and always made recommendations aimed to strengthen and expand the
capacity of our people. Obviously, this task has become our important
agenda in the development strategic policy and the cause for responding
to other confronting problems, reforms, and the development of education
sector in systematical and comprehensive forms. Parallel to this, we
have also tried to gather resources from different sources including
public sector, private sector, development partners, parents and
custodians of students, and many other donators in order to invest,
support and participate in the promotion of our education sector.
Furthermore, I always think the development of high quality human
resources and the effective use of human resources is not only solving
the job problems of our people and increasing their productivity, but it
is a long-term vision for sustainable development and investment in
strengthening and expanding our national capacity to better our
comparative advantage than other nations. Because based on the
experience of other countries in the region succeeding in developing
their economies in the last 3 decades indicate that investment in
education was started first as it was a key factor for increasing work
productivity and ensuring long-lasting stable economic growth. In this
spirit, we necessarily have to improve the quantity and quality of the
education sector including technical and skill trainings with more
incentives to draw greater investment in this sector. So, the promotion
of quality of human resources is a core factor that Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sports have to be highly focused on in order to
conform with the view of the government and our society. For that we
have to understand that training is an intertwined and inter-dependent
mechanism from the beginning till the end, starting with the procedures
for determining the requirements for entrance examinations, theories,
practices, improving the education programs, teaching activities and
learning activities, implementation of study activities, and the
mechanisms of final examinations.
As I
have brought up many times, if we have only peace and democracy and have
no development of human resources we cannot development our country with
sustainability. A country that can develop is certainly starting from
the human resources of that country. So in order to ensure that Cambodia
can become successful in the highly competitive situation of globalized
economy, the strengthening of quality of education sector and technical
and skill trainings is a must-be-satisfied condition.
Moreover, currently industrialized countries are facing with the
increasing of old aged people but countries in Asia especially South
Asia and South East Asia have an increasing number of young and
energetic labor force. This trend shows that in the not so long term
Asia will have a competitive advantage in global labor market in
fulfilling the need of industry sector, factory and services. But we
have to acknowledge that in the future low-cost labor force will not
remain as a competitive advantage. In contrast, human capital, highly
skilled and knowledgeable human resources will play a determining role
in the global economic competition. Therefore, the development of high
quality and healthy human resources will have to remain in the priority
list of the agenda of national strategic policy development. In this
view, certainly Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports have to be
focused on improving education and training along with establishing
other standard letters to ensure effective work and promotion of this
sector.
Parallel
to this, I hope that all students receiving the degrees today will have
an opportunity to use your ability and knowledge in helping developing
our country. You all should continue working hard, and try develop your
personality. In addition, you should not abandon learning, including
continue doing research. You should consider learning as an ongoing
process that has no end, which better sharpen your knowledge and
know-how of each individual. Through all these efforts, I believe that
you all will become teachers and scholars with 3 characteristics,
including the ability to educate, to do research, and good morality at
work to help promote the capacity of human resources and national
economic growth.
Once again, on behalf of the Royal Government and my wife
and my own behalf, I would like to thank and appreciate the Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sport and all related Institutions who have
materially, spiritually and financially supported the National Institute
of Education to be more successful. Along with that, the Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sport must implement with more active actions in
order to strengthen and expand with the objective to ensure the
enrolment equality, quality improvement and efficiency of education
service, staff and institutional development, which are the key
strategies to promote these sectors in quanity and quality in all
education levels throughout the Kingdom of Cambodia.
Before ending, I would like the National Institute of
Education to continue its utmost effort in order to achieve the vision
set 2010-2015 by making sure that the teaching staffs are more competent
in technical issues, foreign languages, use of Computers at the
international standard, research in education, in order to strengthen
their ownership of earning for life to transform Cambodia to become the
society of true learners. At the same time, the Institute must support
the quality education at the high school nationwide through creating
Multi-information Centers and E-learning programs. These modern
conditions must be coherently attached to the program of cooperation,
training and pedagogy, which are significant factors for training
teachers at the higher and foundation levels to be more progressive with
quality, efficiency and high responsibility.
At the end, together with the congratulation to the
granduates today, my wife and I would like to wish you all success in
life and duties for our beloved nation and also wish Excellencies Ladies
and Gentlemen, the Management, Lecturers and Staffs of the National
Institute of Education, National and International Distinguished Guests
the four gems of Buddhist blessing: Longevity, Nobility, Health and
Strength.
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