Revisiting primary school dropout in rural Cambodia Fata No • Chanphirun Sam • Yukiko Hirakawa Received: 29 September 2011 / Revised: 1 May 2012 / Accepted: 27 June 2012 / Published online: 13 July 2012 Ó Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2012 Abstract Previous studies on school dropout in Cambo- dia often used data from subjects after they already drop- ped out or statistics from education-related institutions. Using data from children in two rural provinces before they dropped out, this study examines four main factors in order to identify their influence on primary school dropout in Cambodia. Results from logistic regression analysis revealed that some predictors on individual, family, and school factors were found to be statistically significant to predict the odds of dropout in both grades 1 and 5, whereas poverty and child labor could not be detected, though they have been frequently cited as major predictors in the lit- erature of school dropout in Cambodia as well as devel- oping countries. Keywords Dropout Á Primary school Á Cambodia Á Rural education Á Early school leaving Introduction The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has been placing a great emphasis on education as a major tool for social and economic development of the country. Since 2000, RGC has committed itself to achieving universal 9-year basic education by 2015, which is reflected in the product of the 12-year EFA National Plan 2003–2015. The success has been shown in a remarkable increase in both gross and net enrollment rates at the basic education level. However, dropout at primary schools has remained an unsolved problem for years in the Cambodian education system, which has hindered the realization of EFA goals by 2015. In 2008, for instance, the survival rate from grades 1–6 was around 59.33 %, but only 53.52 % were estimated to complete primary school cycle, while the remaining percentages dropped out along the way (Cambodian Min- istry of Education, Youth and Sport [MoEYS] 2009). To address the dropout problem, several studies were undertaken in Cambodia by using different methods, all of which mainly relied on the opinions of the dropouts. In those studies, poverty and child labor were found to be the major contributing factors toward dropout. Since 2005, no studies were further conducted to gain a clearer picture of this educational wastage phenomenon. This study revisits the dropout problem in Cambodian primary schools to clarify its influential factors and to gain deeper insights into its phenomenon, using a different method called survival or event history method. This method allows researchers to observe patterns of occurrence, compare those patterns among groups, and model their analyses over time (Willett and Singer 1991). This kind of method is very appropriate for quantitative studies of processes of school dropout. This is the first attempt to study the problem of school dropout as a process, rather than an event, in the Cambodian context. Unlike other studies, it hypothesizes that the root causes of dropout vary from grade to grade. It also examines school dropout without pooling data from the already dropped out chil- dren per se and their families. F. No (&) Á Y. Hirakawa Hiroshima University, B110, Kanadian Hatsu Sumida, Higashi Hiroshima 739-0151, Japan e-mail: nofata-ifl@hiroshima-u.ac.jp Y. Hirakawa e-mail: hirayuki@hiroshima-u.ac.jp C. Sam Royal University of Phnom Penh, Rusian Federation Blvd, Tuol Kork, Phnom Penh, Cambodia e-mail: sphirun@yahoo.com 123 Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. (2012) 13:573–581 DOI 10.1007/s12564-012-9220-2