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Best Practice in the field: setting the scene
This document discusses best practices in education in developing countries. It addresses challenges such as quality versus access, teacher training, and inclusion. Tanzania is provided as an example of a country achieving the goal of universal primary education, but still facing quality issues. Best practices are defined as being holistic, sustainable, addressing government priorities, and having long-lasting impact. Examples provided include FAWE supporting girls' education, an organization helping orphans in Tanzania, and Link Community Development evaluating school performance to improve quality.
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Best Practice in the field: setting the scene
- 1. Best Practice inthe Field: setting the scene Dr Samantha Ross Programme Director Link Community Development
- 2. • How arewe doing in our support of education in developing countries? • The challenges faced • Quality v’s Access • How to improve quality – Teacher Training – Measuring impact – Inclusion – Gender equality / community participation • Suggestions for ‘Best Practice’
- 3. MDG 2: AchieveUniversal Primary Education Target 2 Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete Progress: • 49 percent of developing countries (55 countries) are on target • 34 percent (38 countries) are close to being on target But: • Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia are home to the vast majority of children out of school (77 million out of school in 2009). • Inequality thwarts progress towards universal education. • 17 percent (19 countries) are far behind the target Among the low-income countries, 3 countries have achieved the goal or are on target: Myanmar, Tajikistan, Tanzania (2012)
- 4. Tanzania • Enrolment 95.5% (2010) BUT ... • 4266 primary schools (2010) = 355% increase since 2001 • 500 billion TZS to 2 trillion TZS = (£750 million) HakiElimu 2010
- 5. • Uwezo (2011)results show: •Just over 1/4 can read Std 2 level Kiswahili •Only 1/3 perform Std 2 level maths On completion of primary school •only 3/4 read Std 2 level Kiswahili •only 1/2 read Std 2 level English (language of secondary and higher level education, government, judiciary, mass media). UWEZO 2011
- 6. Challenges exacerbated by high enrolment levels • Available resources do not match learner numbers: – High Teacher-Pupil ratio – High Pupil-Book ratio – Lack of trained teachers – Poor infrastructure – High level of drop-outs and repetition (inefficient) Classroom in Malawi with 314 pupils to 1 teacher
- 7. • Can beproblematic to equate success in achieving MDG 2 as a measure of Best Practice in Education. • MDG 2 focuses on access – bums on seats. • Ask ourselves “Is it acceptable that a child can complete a full course of primary education and still not be able to adequately read or do maths”? • Need to consider the quality of the education and the learning outcomes?
- 8. Defining ‘quality’ ineducation “ Education should allow “Relevant, appropriate, children to reach their participatory, flexible, fullest potential in terms of cognitive, emotional and inclusive, protective.” creative capacities.” (Save the Children 2010) (UNESCO 2005) “Promote learners capacity, confidence, curiosity, inquiry and creativity.” (HakiElimu 2010)
- 9. Examples of BestPractice How can we support quality? • Teacher Training • Community engagement • Accurately measure performance/ impact • Include all
- 10. Improve-it Framework, BOND,NIDOS, 2012
- 11. What is BestPractice in the field? • Holistic – access and quality • Sustainable – beyond input of donor • Addresses government priorities and local contexts (strong needs analysis involving governments and communities) • Long-lasting and far reaching impact (value for money and resources)
- 15. Examples of BestPractice Examples of Best Practice • FAWE – girls education, aligned with government policies, long-term changing of cultural mind-sets • Children of Songea – capacity build a local organisation to support orphans to attain a quality education • Link Community Development – supports governments (national and local) and communities to evaluate school performance enabling better targeting of resources to deliver a better quality eductaion.
Editor's Notes
- #2 Good morning – thank you for attending. Thank you Gari. My name is … Link is an education NGO that supports the delivery of a quality education to children in … through partnering with national and district govts and communities. Introduction to morning’s presentations.
- #3 Outline of session How do we know if the education programmes we are running/ supporting are successful?
- #4 One way is to see how our partner country is doing in attaining the MDGs. 8 of them - Adopted by world leaders in 2000, to be achieved by 2015, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide concrete, numerical benchmarks for tackling extreme poverty in all its many dimensions . The MDGs provide a framework for the international community to work together to make sure that human development reaches everyone, everywhere. If these goals are achieved, world poverty will be cut by half, tens of millions of lives will be saved, and billions more people will have the opportunity to benefit from the global economy. MDG2 is the global tool used to measure progress in education. It sets out to ensure that boys and girls all over the world will be able to complete a full cycle of primary education (between 6-8 years – basic skills). UPE champions free compulsory education – open to all. Stats on slide – MDG2 is showing signs of success - 83% of developing countries either on or close to achieving this target, i.e. all children attending full cycle of 1ry school. But still millions of children out-of school children - 77 million children out of school by 2009 ; and inequalities still affect the most vulnerable i.e. girls, disabled students, very poor 19 countries far behind e.g. Mali, Malawi, DRC, Sudan. Lets have a closer look at one of the success stories to see what ‘achieving the goal’ or ‘on target’ means in this MDG context. .
- #5 Tanzania is considered an MDG success story [read stats]. However, there’s another side to this story. Lets look closer at what is happening in terms of learning outcomes and achievement. Here the picture is not so great. The graph shows that as financing, enrolment and infrastructure increases, attainment decreases .
- #6 Another Tanzanian study by Uwezo showed similarly poor results in learning outcomes. The research looked at groups of learners across the country at Std 3 (approx 8 yrs old) and Std 7 (final year of primary school – compulsory). It measured learners attainment against Std 2 curricula level tests in Kiswahili (the national language), English and Maths. [Read stats] In summary, the Deputy Minister of Education in 2011 stated ‘Illiteracy increased in TZ from 11% in 1986 to 31% in 2010’. Indicates that despite success in MDG 2 with increasing enrolment figures and infrastructure, Tanzania’s children are not receiving a good education. So success in UPE and MDG 2 does not equate to an education that equips learners with basic skills needed to develop their own lives. What else does high levels of enrolment mean in terms of challenges education systems may face?
- #7 Limpopo DoE School Monitoring & Support Framework 5/13/2007 Link Community Development And these all lead to low levels of attainment due to a poor quality education
- #8 Therefore it is problematic to equate success in MDG 2 as a measure of a well-functioning education system . The overriding problem with a stated success in MDG2 is that it focuses on access and enrolment, resource provision and infrastructure . We need to ask ourselves – have we succeeded in MDG 2 if a child finishes 7 years of primary education and is still not be able to read in their country’s dominant language or perform simple maths – 2 skills that are considered essential if a person is to develop and grasp opportunities to break the cycle of poverty they might find themselves in. Best Practice provided by Scottish NGOs must include and reflect upon quality as well as bums on seats in order to better support education systems in developing countries. I’ve mentioned ‘quality’ a lot – how is this defined?
- #9 3 definitions from differing education supporters / providers [Read definitions]. [relevant to children's needs and country contexts, now and for the future appropriate to their developmental level, abilities, language and potential developmental opportunities participatory – involving children, their families and communities in the process of learning and the organisation of the school flexible enough to meet different and changing conditions such as environmental and social developments, technological advances and crises inclusive of all children – seeing diversity and differences between children as resources to support learning and play, rather than problems to overcome protective – safeguarding children from exploitation, abuse, violence and conflict.] So how might we support the delivery of a quality education?
- #10 These are some issues that we can look at – to name just 4. teacher training – equip teachers with skills to manage large classrooms , assess progress , understand curricula, use current pedagogy , develop leadership and management abilities to improve classroom and school practices . Engage the community in supporting the school – not just with finances, but also by teaching parents about the value of education, the value of sending their girls to school and not marrying them early , of the value of basic skills to increase their children’s chances of moving beyond the poverty cycle . E.g. Mother Groups Measuring and evaluating school performance to show school (and district and national governments) where the strengths and weaknesses are so gaps can be filled with minimal resources available. The same goes for measuring the impact of our education programmes – so we can see where the gaps are. If we can’t fill the gaps we should partner with another organisation who can. Real inclusion means including all those children out-of-school – girls, disabled, sick, ethnic minorities, orphans, the desperately poor so that every child has equity in opportunity. These elements are some that will enable progress towards a real move to improving the quality of education for all. Each will be discussed in further detail after this presentation. How might we measure if the ways we, as NGOs supporting education, is having an impact?
- #11 BOND and NIDOS are in the process of developing indicators that can help education organisations measure their impact thus enabling them to ensure they are supporting the delivery of a quality education which is accessible to all. NGOs across UK that work in education in developing countries were brought together to develop these broad set of education indicators to measure impact. These include: ensuring govt support; ensuring schools are well managed and resourced; ensuring the teaching is of good quality; all children are included; and communities are engaged. By using these indicators NGOs can ensure their programmes are impacting education in the most useful and meaningful ways. So we need to ensure that the programmes we support in our partner countries include elements vital to improving education for all i.e. are reflecting BP. But do we consider to be BP?
- #12 We think BP involves these elements, at least. Holistic and focus on access and quality - focus only on increasing the numbers of children in schools leads to rising numbers of children in poorly resourced classrooms with not enough teachers. The ‘quality’ definitions show that supporting education in developing countries must be more than just improving enrolment figures. Teachers must be adequately trained, communities engaged and all children included. If an organisation specialises in just one aspect e.g. teacher training or school feeding, then it should be their responsibility to ensure that the other ‘quality’ aspects are being considered and that they’re own impact does not detrimentally affect the quality of education the children are receiving . - organisations could partner up in Scotland and/or with orgs/ govt in host country to ensure a holistic approach is being taken. Sustainable – programmes must be sustainable beyond the input of donor. Providing text books, supplying school meals, building classrooms, or sending notebooks and pens from Scotland to Africa all enable education but for only one generation of children. T hey are not sustainable and often exacerbate the donor-dependency that we should be moving away from . Africa has textbooks, pens, notebooks, and cups – they do not need ours. What is sustainable is support in capacity building to ensure lessons learned produce better outcomes from one generation to the next. A strong needs analysis before programmes begin ensures what we offer is needed and does not deflect from other more pressing educational priorities a govt may have identified and may have requested help with. Why set up a programme sending text books to Africa when African countries have publishing houses, printers, writers and illustrators capable of making their own books relevant to their own needs whilst boosting their own economy? Wouldn’t it be better to capacity build these skills in country and then focus support in areas of ‘real’ need such as training teachers in Special Educational needs for disabled children? And lastly by supporting strong national priorities that enable a whole district to implement a programme followed with strong MEL, enables far reaching impact and not a focus within 1 community or village. This gives better value for money and resources, builds capacity across a wider spectrum of people and results in greater impact. If all our programmes contained all of these elements then support to our partner countries would be more valuable, more contextual, and importantly more useful.
- #13 Limpopo DoE School Monitoring & Support Framework 5/13/2007 Link Community Development Generates easily understandable data that schools / districts / communities can use to measure progress. There is a need for integrated planning, informed by analysis of data, that ensures that the right interventions are delivered to the right schools at the right time. Limpopo DoE School Monitoring & Support Framework 5/13/2007 Link Community Development
- #14 No pre-determined set of SPR indicators. Developed specifically for each national context , in conjunction with district officials. Indicator selection is driven by local district needs , and not dictated by a pre-prepared list. SPR is a process, not a ready-made instrument . To provide an overview of the SPR process, the following list of indicators is indicative of the selection of indicators that have been developed in the past. These based on Uganda . 2 groups – Teaching & Learning / Management & Governance Can you see where GTs might be able to impact the process.
- #15 Piloted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, SA, Uganda Scaled up in Uganda (2000+ schools) SA (1000+ schools) Informing national inspectorates in Malawi and Uganda Comic Relief 18 month Action Research project to refine indicators with gender emphasis in Malawi
- #16 Keep this?