The School Health Education project for teacher training in Cambodia ended in December last year. Now, five months after the closing VVOB organized a final evaluation. It was the first time we did an evaluation well after the project was closed, what made us a bit anxious about the outcomes. The assessment was done by an external national consultant Mr. Vattanak, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. They interviewed students, teachers and directors about health education at their school.
The evaluation team was pleased (and we even more) to see the VVOB manuals are still in use by teacher trainers and students. Both handbooks on methodology and medical background proved to be very useful. All stakeholders requested extra books, so more students could use these when preparing their lessons. In none of the colleges the manuals had disappeared from the libraries, looked still ‘white’ and unused, or were hidden under a big pile of dust…uff!
The most important result is the integration of all VVOB manuals as references to support the official curriculum for teacher training (2010-2011). In other words the SHE manuals are considered by Ministry of Education as the official guidelines to teach health in all teacher training colleges in Cambodia. So the box “sustainability” on the checklist of the evaluation team could be ticked… uff again!
Like in every respectable evaluation, some important lessons learned came up. The first one concerns the roll-out of the materials. At the end of the project, VVOB organized a nationwide training for all teacher trainers who teach health and for their directors. Unfortunately some of these teachers are now replaced, retired or teaching other subjects, the transfer of new skills in these cases was not ensured.
A second lesson learned refers to the fact educational innovations should be fully supported by the management of the institute/school, if this is not the case chances for success are limited. Indeed not really a very surprising statement, but often the importance of this target group tends to be underestimated.
All in we can be proud of the results of this project and the efforts made by our teacher trainers and the VVOB staff. The conclusions of the evaluation team were positive, since all objectives were reached. The stakeholders are satisfied and confirmed the SHE project produced excellent and valuable teaching resources.
