The Cambodia Rural School Project
The Sir Graham Balfour School
Building a school in Cambodia
Sir Graham Balfour is a mixed community comprehensive school in the County town of Stafford. We have around 900 students aged between 11 and 18, who come from a full range of social backgrounds. Most notably, we were involved in one of the “pathfinder” PFI projects, and moved into brand new buildings in January 2002. Leaving behind very poor accommodation raised everyone’s morale, and gave us a great sense of optimism for the future. As a school we were determined to ensure that our students fully appreciated how fortunate they were, however we knew this would not be achieved through preaching in assemblies. What was needed was something that involved the whole school community and could carry our message.
On January 4th 2002, just four days before we moved into our new building, the TES carried a feature entitled “After the Terror”, which described the efforts being made to rebuild Cambodia’s education after the Khmer Rouge. Som, a Headteacher was quoted as saying:-
“Children arrive at the new schools as soon as they are built. There is no need to advertise them. There is so much enthusiasm that we cannot keep up. We have to stop children at the door.”
These schools were being built by the charity “American Assistance for Cambodia” (see www.cambodiaschools.com ) whose aim was to build 200 Primary Schools. The Director is an American Bernie Krisher, who just happened to be visiting England a few weeks after we contacted him. He travelled to Stafford, and talked to our Sixth Form as well as several groups in Year 9. We were amazed when he told us that it would cost just £12,000 for us to build a school in Cambodia. There and then our project was born.
All our fundraising was devoted to our Cambodia appeal. Mufti days, a sponsored walk, cake stalls, watching the World Cup on a big screen, were part of a magnificent effort. As we wanted this to be our students’ school, we decided not to seek commercial sponsorship. We achieved our total in just 18 months. We used assemblies, articles in our newsletters and of course various subject lessons to explain the sad history of Cambodia to our students. The contrast between our state of the art facilities and the daily lives of children in Cambodia was stark. Our commitment to the project grew and grew. Construction of our school commenced in February 2003, and was completed in June 2004. The school is situated at Chiphat Commune, Thmar Bang, in the district of Koh Kong. The Khmer Rouge was particularly active here, and the whole district has vast areas of uncleared land mines which regularly maim children and adults alike. 500 children attend the school, and are taught by 8 teachers in three shifts a day.
The opening ceremony was arranged for February 11th 2005, during their dry season. We believed that it was essential that two of our students were part of our party that travelled to Cambodia to attend the ceremony and begin the process of building long term links with Sir Graham Balfour, Cambodia. Ian (Y11) and Megan (Y12) were selected after a detailed application process. Altogether four of us travelled to Cambodia for a week. We visited an orphanage, talked to adults who were undertaking their three months of training to become teachers of English and visited the Killing Fields as well as Camp S21. Our guides Dy and Sareth showed us the real Cambodia. They described how their Buddhist faith encouraged them to look to the future rather than seek out those to blame for the past. We were all deeply moved by this, and felt we had much to learn from such a warm, forgiving and generous people. We met a girl, Bah, selling postcards at Angkor Wat to earn her family a dollar, then met her again a day later in a school classroom. We saw abject poverty on the streets of Phnom Penh, as well as 5* hotels in Sihanoukville where armed guards kept locals from the beach.
After a long journey on dirt tracks, we completed the trip to our school with a 30 minute canoe ride. We were met by the village elders, who escorted us to the Opening Ceremony. The entire village turned out in their best clothes, for what was described as their most important day in the last hundred years. We gave each child a present of 2 exercise books and a commemorative pen. They were so thrilled; it was as if we had given them ten years of Christmas presents all rolled into one. The school had no equipment whatsoever, and when we returned to Phnom Penh we bought clocks, weighing scales, some books and whiteboards which were later sent to the school. When we talked to the teachers we were struck by their determination to educate the next generation so that the Country could create a better future for itself. This was a first hand example of a whole village taking responsibility for the education of its children.
We all left Cambodia humbled by the people we had met, and our overall experience. Communication with our school is difficult as there is not even a true postal service, far less electricity for the internet. Our Y7 students are, however, in the process of writing to children at the school and we are arranging for these letters to be delivered through the charity. We have set up an email link to the orphanage, which is going well. We hope that a teacher from Cambodia may visit England in the future, which would help us to bring Cambodia right into our students’ classrooms. Perhaps the most exciting possibility is that of our Y13 students visiting Cambodia as part of a “gap year” experience. Who knows what the future might hold?
