A delegation from the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport visited Spain from the 2nd to the 7th of February to see first hand how Spain is integrating and using ICT in its Education system.

The delegation, headed by Secretary of State H.E. Im Sethy, also included Under Secretary fo State H.E. Dr. Nath Bunroeun, Mr. Leang SengHak, Director of the Teacher Training Department, Mr. Om Sethy, Director of Information and ASEAN Relationships, and Mr. Sok Tha, in charge of ICT in Education, and co-project manager for the Open Schools Program. The trip was organized by the WordForge Foundation, Spanish counterpart of the Open Institute. Javier Solá acompanied the delegation.

As education in Spain is mostly descentralised to the regions, the Delegation visited the regional governments of Andalucía and Extremadura. Both regions have develped, during the last 5 years, policies of having one computer for every two students, and using only Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Education and for all the Administration fo the regional governments. They have integrated ICT as part of their education, and most classes are taught with partial computer support. Over 150.000 computers in schools, all connected to the Internet, have been deployed in Andalucía. The use of FOSS permits centralised maintenance of all 150.000 computers, except when they break down physically. It also allows to have tight control of what is happening in each class, where the professor can, from his/her computer, see what is happening in each one of the students computers, show the one student or all of them what the teacher has in his/her computer, or take control of any computer in the classroom, without getting up from his/her desk.

Andalucía also has centralised school management system, in which each school can do the management of its center through the Internet, without need to install software locally. This allows the local Ministry of education to know immediately all the necessary information about the state of Education in Andalucia.

It also has tools for the school to prepare its own website and communication tools, for students and teachers, as well as educational support tools that can be accessed by the students, and corrected by the teachers.

The delegation also visited H.E. Francisco Ros, Secretary of State for Telecommunications at the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce, to understand how the central Spanish government is providing funds and infrastructure to schools all around the country, working together with the central Ministry of Education and with all the governments of the autonomous regions of Spain.

The Spanish Ministry of Education presented to the delegation all its work on the development and distribution of educational content addressed to Education (excluding higher education). The Ministry's website includes resources for all students, as well as for all other players in the Education sector, as are teachers (continuing education), parents of primary school students and elder people who need non-formal education. The Ministry has developed reference materials for all courses in the education system, and continues to develop better content, either working with private companies or through contests for teachers to develop good materials. Great effort is being put into developing "digital education objects" that can be used by teachers to build their own educational materials, or improve on what is already there. All materials are licensed with a Creative Commons License, so that others can use them without having to worry about proprietary rights.

The delegation also met with H.E. Juan Pablo de la Iglesia, Secretary General of the Spanish Agency for Spanish Cooperation, main donor of the Open Schools Program. Secretary of State H.E. Im Sethy thanked the Secretary General for the generous support of th Ministry, and expressed an interest for the teaching on Spanish language in Cambodia, asking the Secretary General to send teachers to start a program at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

The trip also included some internal meetings to assimilate the information and to do preparatory work for the Master Plan for ICT in Education that Ministry and Open Institute are working on together.