High School Scholarships
In Grades 10, 11, and 12 students receive free education for the first half of the day. After that, they must pay their teachers for extra classes in order to get a complete education and be able to pass exams. Because of this, students living in poverty who cannot pay the fees do not have an equal chance of completing their secondary schooling. This is why less than 5% of the rural population graduates high school.
PLF students are meeting with success in their primary school education and are pushing themselves to continue to secondary school in ever-increasing numbers. Our high school scholarships plug the missing gaps by providing the extra classes needed – giving students better scores in the Grade 12 exam, and even qualifying them for a university degree.
It’s costly to support such a large high school student body, but this is a good problem to have because it means their passion for education is growing.
It also means PLF must choose the students for the scholarships carefully, taking into consideration the student’s grades, attendance, their level of motivation, the family’s level of support, the ability of the other members of the family to make up lost income, the general stability of the family and many other components that make up a student’s ability to overcome obstacles to their graduation.
Additonal obstacles arise depending on the varied levels of public school effectiveness within each of the pathways where we work, therefore scholarships have been adjusted and honed over time to counter these challenges. In Cambodia, there are two options for G12 – a Social track, and a Science track – which lay the foundation for corresponding university majors. The science subjects are generally harder, requiring longer tuition support to pass.
All these considerations have resulted in the following classifications of scholarships:
Grade 12 – 1 year scholarship (Urban & Rural students)
$150 social track total
$300 science track total
Grade 11 & 12 – 2 year scholarship (Rural students only)
$600 science track total
Grade 10, 11 & 12 – 3 year English scholarship (Urban only)
From Grade 9, we begin to identify those students who show exceptional acadamic promise and who will greatly benefit from additional English at a specialised language school in Siem Reap, as well as the extra G12 classes required to pass the public school Grade 12 exam.
$1600 total – 10 awarded per year
For students living in poverty, these costs are way beyond their family’s income, meaning that without support a high school education is an impossible dream.
Until there are fundamental changes in the Cambodian education system, we are committed to providing strategies to support these students in their efforts to complete school.
We’d like to see all of our primary school alumni graduate Grade 12. Their country needs them.