A space for informed debate on education, teaching, and development
Perspectives
TDSO believes that improving education systems requires more than programme delivery. It requires open, evidence-informed debate about what works, what does not, and why. This section brings together articles from educators, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who have something considered to say about the challenges and opportunities facing education in Cambodia and beyond.
Articles published here represent the views of their authors. They do not necessarily reflect the position of TDSO.
We publish original contributions as well as articles from other sources, reproduced with the permission of the original author or publisher.
Who can contribute?
Perspectives is open to anyone with relevant experience or expertise: teachers, teacher educators, education officials, researchers, development professionals, and others working in or closely connected to the education sector. We welcome articles that challenge received wisdom, present evidence critically, or open questions that deserve wider attention. We do not require academic credentials, but we do expect rigorous argument and respect for evidence.
All submissions are reviewed before publication. We reserve the right to decline or request revisions to any submission that does not meet our editorial standards.
How to submit
If you have an article you would like us to consider, please contact us.
Perspectives ...
Artificial Intelligence in Cambodian Education: a Warning Against Misplaced Hope
Cambodia’s education sector is placing growing institutional confidence in artificial intelligence as a response to longstanding gaps in teaching quality, infrastructure, and equity. This essay argues that confidence is misplaced. Across MoEYS programmes such as Live Teaching 2026, the Primary Learning Platform, and Sala Digital, and among development partners including UNESCO/STEPCam, the same structural logic repeats: AI and digital tools are deployed as compensatory mechanisms ahead of the conditions that would make them effective. The result is not improvement but the reproduction of existing inequalities at a higher level of technological complexity. Drawing on cognitive science, bilingual education research, and Cambodian educational scholarship, the essay identifies three structural harms: AI widens the access gap it claims to close, introduces cultural and economic bias through Western-centric training data, and erodes the foundational knowledge and critical capacity that genuine learning requires. The argument concludes that the priority must be teacher development, a Cambodian core knowledge curriculum, genuine bilingual education infrastructure, and honest investment in physical school conditions, not AI platforms that assume into existence the very conditions they cannot provide.
Rethinking Grant Funding: The Case for Locally Driven Development
The dominant model of grant funding channels resources through projects designed to advance donors’ priorities rather than the core programmes and institutional needs of the organisations and public bodies receiving support. Across the education sector, this approach fragments local capacity, sidelines ministries and teacher training institutions, and produces outcomes that are difficult to sustain. Donors have a legitimate role in setting standards for how funded work is conducted, requiring inclusion, environmental responsibility, financial transparency, and a focus on real outcomes rather than administrative outputs. What they should not do is determine what the work is. TDSO calls on donors and funding bodies to draw a clear distinction between the floor they set and the ceiling they must not impose, and to shift towards funding arrangements that actively support coordination, strengthen national systems, and place substantive programme decisions in the hands of those closest to the learners they are meant to serve.