Improving educational quality remains a critical challenge in Cambodia, particularly in primary education, where many students continue to struggle with foundational literacy and numeracy skills. In response, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport introduced the Model Primary School Standards (MPSS) to strengthen teaching quality, school leadership, accountability, and community participation across public primary schools. However, few empirical studies have examined how these standards are experienced by teachers and parents at the school level. This qualitative study explores teachers’ and parents’ lived experiences with academic challenges and student success in Cambodian primary schools in Pailin Province. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 52 participants, including school principals, teachers, parents, and members of school management committees from five primary schools. The data were analyzed via thematic analysis. The findings reveal that academic challenges are shaped by interconnected structural, institutional, and family-level factors, including student health and learning difficulties, family poverty, limited parental education, heavy teacher workload, insufficient instructional resources, and inconsistent community engagement. Moreover, student success was associated with regular attendance, teacher encouragement, parental monitoring, effective home–school communication, and collaborative stakeholder support. The study highlights the importance of strengthening teacher support, leadership capacity, and inclusive, context-sensitive parental engagement to enhance the implementation of MPSS. These findings contribute context-specific qualitative insights into education reform in Cambodia and offer practical implications for policymakers, school leaders, and educators seeking to improve learning outcomes in resource-constrained settings.
Tang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.