MoEYS’s Department of Personnel establishes new Continuous Professional Development Management Office

In August, the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport (MoEYS) approved the establishment of the Continuous Professional Development Management Office (CPDMO). The office was set up with the support of UNESCO’s Strengthening Teacher Education Programmes in Cambodia (STEPCam), with financial support from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). The Office will play a pivotal role in supporting MoEYS reform on the establishment of a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) system and the Teacher Career Pathway (TCP) for teachers in Cambodia.

The new Office’s goal is to manage a high-quality, school-based professional development system, which supports and empowers educators to ensure that every public school in Cambodia has well-qualified and effective teachers and school directors. It will do this through the management and regulation of CPD delivery, which includes benchmarking, accreditation and quality assurance; the management of CPD credits; and communication with teachers, school leaders and education specialists.

The Office is currently divided into three divisions: management of CPD records, CPD credit, and communication. According to Mr. Tola Chan, Chief of CPDMO, key priorities in the coming months are to revamp MoEYS’s Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) to better support the MoEYS’s emergent CPD system; and the development of a CPD handbook for teachers and school principals.

The Office is currently being supported by two STEPCam Technical Advisors on HRMIS, which is being upgraded to successfully capture CPD credit  and support education personnel’s career progression within the TCP framework. This improved system can then subsequently support and systemize Teacher Qualification Upgrades as well as teacher deployment, improving both the efficiency and quality of the education system in Cambodia.