Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

of instruction, but the Bunong children who attendschool know very little spoken Khmer. Bunong familiesdepend on their children to help on the fields, go to theforest, watch the animals and look after their youngersiblings. Failure in school and the pressure to help thefamily survive, result in high student attrition ratesand repetition. Despite the fact the Bunong are themajority group in the province, they only contributean estimated 20 percent to the student population inboth lower and upper secondary school combined.It is hoped that bilingual education will help Bunongstudents in school to be successful and, through NFEprogrammes, help those who have failed in schoolalready to acquire the education they have missed.Strategies andimplementation Process© POEYSThe POEYS in Mondulkiri had already for a couple of years strongly supported ICC’s bilingual NFEprogramme in the province. Seeing the success of the mother tongue-based programme, the POEYSdecided to use the materials and the programme developed by ICC in four Bunong communities thatneeded literacy classes.Selection of the Project Sites andFacilitatorsCareful consideration was taken in selecting the project sites. Twomain factors were taken into consideration: (1) the availability ofBunong-speaking teachers, and (2) the proximity to the provincialcapital for ease of monitoring and supervision.Four villages were chosen in three different districts, Bu Hyam(school area), Bu Loung, Srae Omboum, and Bu Tru villages. For thesecond phase of the project, two new locations have been chosen,Bu Hyam (Yesu village), and Bu Hyam (Bu Ntrong village). The newvillages were chosen using the same criteria as the original fourvillages from the first phase.© POEYSFor each village, trained teachers who graduated from teacherstraining colleges were chosen to pair up with community teachersto teach in the classes. An added intention was also to see whattype of teacher would work best in this type of setting. Two of thecommunity teachers already had responsibilities in the village.One was a village chief and the other was the leader for a smallerpart of a village. These persons were specifically chosen for their[ 58 ]