The BETT Scholarship programme is one of 3 initial components of BETT (Basic Education and Teacher Training Project in Siem Reap, Otdar Meanchey and Kampong Cham).
The scholarship programme was originally planned as a budget support to the national Priority Action Programme 12, but it was later agreed by the Directorate General of Education/MoEYS and BETT to set up a parallel programme instead that would:
- pilot alternative strategies; and - build capacities and exchange lessons learned with partners.
The original design was largely based on the priority action plan (PAP) 12 and Asian Development Bank /Japanese Fund for Poverty Reduction programme. Some modifications were made based on the assessment of these partner programmes, which had been running 1 year before BETT launched its scholarships. Further modifications were made along the way based on field monitoring and survey results. With World Bank/CESSP coming into the picture from the school year 2005-2006 onwards, design was further adapted towards harmonisation among different programmes.
As a part of the BETT project, the scholarships component adheres to the overall basic BETT tenets :
- is pro-poor; - gender-sensitive (giving prioritise to girls, considered to be more prone to dropout than boys, through aiming at 60% female beneficiaries);
- consistent with the government policy of decentralisation;
- builds capacities at local levels;
- strives for quality; and
- to complement with other partner programmes and to have harmonisation procedure with other partners.
