School textbooks never arrived for 69 per cent of high school students in four provinces last year, an NGO investigation has found.

Presented during a conference in the capital yesterday, the survey is a follow-up to a study published in December that sampled 489 students across 33 schools in Kampot, Kampong Speu, Kampong Cham and Phnom Penh, and was jointly carried out by the Khmer Institute for National Development and the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability Network-East Asia and the Pacific.

“The survey found that the textbooks were often of poor quality, they were not delivered in time for the new school year, many schools did not have enough textbooks, and students often had to pay to hire books from the school or buy them from the market,” the report states.

The survey’s release comes on the heels of the announcement of a Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport crackdown on the sale of pirated government textbooks slated to begin in March.