Chapter 6:Review of Improvement of Relevance Quality and Affordability

CHAPTER 6:REVIEW OF IMPROVEMENT OF RELEVANCE QUALITY AND AFFORDABILITY

6.1.Introduction

6.2.Policy Background and Objectives

One of the broad policy objectives of the Education Policy is to improve the quality of mainstreaming education; through professional development of personnel including teachers, senior and middle level managers. The latter is treated in the sector dealing with the Management of the Education sector.

6.3.Relevance

Relevance and quality remain primary objectives for the provision of education both at the Basic and Secondary levels and at all levels. All programmes are to provide relevant, affordable and quality education. These are not only crosscutting issues but are priority targets in the development of education for the world of work, and for life skills for the survival of the individual. In fact the objectives and goals of education are now premised on fight against poverty or on poverty eradication in the Gambia as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Relevance and quality are also related to the type of curriculum and whether the curriculum will adequately prepare the student for higher education or the world of work. In this regard, the teaching syllabus at both the basic education and Senior Secondary Schools have been reviewed and adapted to provide relevant education with emphasis on the development of a critical understanding of knowledge application, problem solving skills, manipulative skills, good citizenship and environmental education across all levels. The curriculum content and focus are as follows, (Education Policy 2004-2015).

1)The teaching of pre-vocational and technical education to be reinforced at the basic cycle level to build competence for a good foundation for the labour market and industry of Gambian youth

2)Priority is placed on the prominence and appreciation of agriculture, main stay of the economy, through school agriculture, the teaching of Agricultural science, and by making the school agricultural and food programme, through the Schools Farms and gardens, part of the teaching and learning process

3)The pre-school (ECD) is to prepare the child for the formal school and the medium of instruction should be in the mother tongue/area language of the child

4)At the lower basic level, the core subjects are English, Mathematics, Science, Social and Environmental Studies/Integrated Studies and French

5)During the first 3 years of the basic cycle, the medium of instruction will be the predominant language of the area in which the child lives. English will be taught as a subject from grade 1 and will be used as a medium of instruction from grade 4. Gambian languages will be taught as subjects from grade 4.

6)The upper basic curriculum will continue to provide basic skills, knowledge and capabilities in science, technology, agriculture and general subjects. It will also provide opportunities to acquire pre-technical, pre-vocational, agriculture, and basic science knowledge and skills to enable pupils to become self-reliant. The use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool, which is currently limited at the SSS, will be progressively expanded to all the levels.

7)Regarding Special needs, the policy emphasis is on inclusiveness and participation in mainstream education by the mildly disabled.

The subjects as harmonized at the upper basic level and offered at the SSS level are namely,

I.Foreign languages (Including English, French, and Arabic)

II.Mathematics

III.Science and Technology

IV.Commerce subjects

V.Religious Knowledge and moral education

VI.Arts subjects

VII.Physical and Health Education

VIII.Life skills education

IX.Technical subjects

X.Agricultural Science

XI.National languages

As should be expected the provision of subjects for school use is dependent upon the availability of resources including qualified teachers to teach these specialist subjects. The current acute shortage of qualified Gambian teachers at the SSS level would have to be addressed by substantially increasing the graduate and specialist teachers’ outputs from the tertiary and higher education institutions. The current enrolment and expected-outputs of trained and qualified teachers from the training institutions would have to increase substantially if these set programmes are to be implemented effectively and those that are concerned with pre-vocational pre-technical vocational and technical, science and technology, including agriculture, require large investments in the form of infrastructure class-rooms and laboratories, technical training equipment and farming inputs. All these require substantial investment outlays in areas, which the donors on education and international partners such as the IDA have not been willing to provide investment funds for. Thus at the upper basic and senior secondary level the provision of technical and vocational education is very weak as a result of the absence of metal or carpentry training workshops which are significant elements of vocational education or due to ill-equipped science labs, which jeopardize the whole objective of promoting and developing science and technical education. If the stated objectives of technical and vocational skills acquirement are to be achieved substantial investment in terms of funding, trained personnel and adequate facilities would be required to achieve relevance of education at the basic and Senior Secondary Schools level.

6.4.Quality

Quality, like relevance, remains one of the biggest challenges of the education system in the country. In the first part of the Education Policy 1988-2003, no targets were set for learning outcomes. More emphasis was placed on inputs, namely access, than outputs and learning achievements. The main objectives to improve the learning outcomes from grade 1 – 9 were to develop a new structured programme at GambiaCollege to train all unqualified teachers by 1996, and to make a significant increase in the expenditure on learning materials and revise the curriculum.

There are several indicators used by the DOSE to determine the extent of quality achieved in the learning process delivered at the basic education level. These include, the percentage of qualified teachers in the system, the number of primary teachers certified to teach, and pupil/teacher ratio, repetition rates by grade, survival rate at grade 5 and the proportion of Grade 6 students who have mastered a set of nationally defined basic learning competencies. A recent perception survey conducted by the UTG team of consultants on Monitoring Progress on Good Governance (2004), data indicates that a majority of Gambians perceived the quality of education to be good. Table 19 shows perceptions of household heads on quality of public education.

Table 19:Perceptions of Household heads on the Quality of the Public Education Service, 2004

Public Education Quality / Frequency / Percent
Very good / 17145 / 13.2%
Good / 71855 / 55.3%
Fair / 23484 / 18.1%
Poor / 14125 / 10.9%
Very poor / 3228 / 2.5%
Total / 129836 / 100%
Not Stated / 3067
Total / 132903

The perceptions of heads of households on the quality of education services generally endorse that there has been some improvements. Over 55.3% are of the view that educational services are good, but only 13.2% consider it very good. This later is a very small percent level. Some 18% considered being fair while 10.9% and 2.5% consider it to be poor and very poor respectively.

Since no targets were set on learning outcomes, the success rates of individual schools and candidates at selection entrance examinations at the end of grades 6 and 9 were the only available indicators one could use to measure success rate (PERS 2001). This however may not be a good measurement of learning achievements since it was a selection examination based on the availability of space that determined the percentage of students that would transit to the next level and remains so for the Senior Secondary School level. The following table 20 shows JSSC Examinations results 2001 (DOSE)

Table 20:DOSE Results of 2001 JSSC Examination.

Subject / Passing level 1-3 / Passing level 4-6 / Passing level 7-8 / Fail
English
All
Female / 7%
8% / 19%
15% / 12%
10% / 62%
67%
Moths
All
Female / 1%
1% / 2%
1% / 14%
11% / 84%
86%

Science

All
Female / 3%
2% / 13%
9% / 32%
19% / 62%
71%

Social Studies

All
Female / 10%
6% / 14%
10% / 36%
30% / 40%
54%
Islamic Studies
All
Female / 10%
6% / 12%
7% / 7%
5% / 71%
82%
Agriculture
All
Female / 11%
8% / 25%
19% / 12%
10% / 52%
63%

Art

All
Female / 11%
8% / 43%
$9% / 25%
27% / 21%
71%

Although this is not a good measure of what most students have learnt, nevertheless, the high proportion of failures at the Junior Secondary Certificate examination must be worrying, and indeed the low grade level of those passing is an indication of inadequate teaching/learning quality. Girls in particular seem to have a much higher failure rate than boys.

New benchmarks have been set to clearly define learning outcomes. The annual National Assessment Test (NAT) is institutionalized to inform the system on pupils’ performance at the lower basic level. Quality indicators on learning achievements at the lower basic level show a growing need to improve the learning achievements of children. The indicators show that only 10% and 6.7% of the sample size of 25 grade 4 students met the achievement levels in English and Mathematics respectively. (Education Policy 2004 – 2015) This shows an extremely low learning achievement level. In a more graphic manner it means over 90% of the sample failed to make the mark. Furthermore these alarming low levels of achievement mostly affected the rural schools where fewer trained teachers are located.

6.5.Quality of Teachers and Teacher Supply

There are several issues that determine teacher education in this country. The success of the 9-3- system depends to a large extend on the availability of sufficient number of trained and highly qualified teachers. The proportion of qualified teachers in primary schools indicate the general quality of the country’s human capital involved in teaching in primary education (EFA 2000 Assessment). The current education policy is designed to provide access to enrolment at the primary level and a greater retention of students at the basic education level, including UBS until all children of relevant age range (6-15) are in school. Consequently there will be a higher demand for teachers, which will even be greater if teachers envisaged for the Madrassa, non-formal education and special needs education are to be included.

In order to achieve the targeted increases in GER during the policy period 1988 - 2003 and subsequent policies, the need to provide a corresponding increase in the supply of qualified teachers was recognized. The Education Policy strategies on teacher education and training stated that for enrolment to increase to 855 in the year 2003, the grades 1 – 6 teaching force will have to increase from 3,370 to over 6,000. This means that Gambia College is required to broaden the scope of its teacher training courses to meet the above target both at the PTC and HTC levels to adequately cater for teacher demand at the basic cycle and for secondary schools. To meet these targets at least 3,000 additional trained teachers are needed at the primary level and the 900 and 600 additional trained teachers are needed for junior secondary and Senior Secondary Schools, respectively

As more subject areas, which widens the curriculum get introduced, more demands for teachers will consequently follow. One key issue for teacher education is the capability to produce sufficiently trained and specialist teachers to meet the demand both in quantity and quality for the 9-3-system of education.

Although this review is on the past policies, it is important to highlight present relevant teacher education training and supply expressed in policy objectives, goals, strategies and outputs.

In the 2004 to 2015 Education Policy, the specific policy objectives on teachers are namely:

Increase the supply of qualified teachers and make more efficient use of the teaching force by maintaining the pupil/ teacher ratio at 45:1 at the basic level

Increase double-shift classes from 25% to 32% by 2015 across all levels

Phase-out double shift teachers by 2015

Improve the quality of teaching and learning at all levels

Improve learning outcomes at all levels

Introduce the 5 national languages, Mandingo, Pularr, Wollof, Sarahule and Jola to be taught at all levels of education during the policy period.

Increase the transition rate from grade 9 to 10 by 50%

Increase the quota of graduate teachers of Gambian nationality at the level of the SSS from 26% to 100% by 2015.

Teacher education and teacher supply is general provided by the Gambia College. The College offers two or three years of post-secondary level courses in teacher training agriculture, nursing and midwifery in the four constituent schools. The current student population is about 1,200 of which 80% are in education and agriculture, and the others in nursing, midwifery and health. The School of Education offers courses, that lead to Primary Teachers Certificate (PTC) and the Higher Teachers Certificate (HTC). The University of the Gambia offers courses leading to a B. ED, and the GTTI offer Technical Teacher Certificate Courses including HTC. Distance education for teacher training is offered by both the Gambia College and the UTG.

Teacher education and training are strategies generally put in place to improve the quality of education. The education policy recognizes the teacher as the pilot and conduit of the students’ learning experiences in gaining knowledge, attitudes and skills that are provided in the curriculum.

The present standards and quality in schools as reflected in the external examination results show low transition and high drop rates suggesting an urgent need to improve the quality of teacher education. The teacher is increasingly becoming the focus of attention and interest because of the pivotal role he/she plays in the delivery of education. The unqualified teacher or UQT and the ill-prepared teacher have some undesirable effects on the quality of education even if their employment remains less expensive to qualified teachers. It is against this background that quality continues to be a key concern. The poor or ill–preparation of teachers in the past has some undesirable effects in the delivery system. One main problem facing teacher education is the inability of the teacher training system to respond quickly to the difficult task of training teachers to handle the increasingly complex process of education in the context of limited and competing resources. This being so, the efficiency of the professional staff is crucial. For the success of education, the teacher has to keep up with the knowledge explosion and as the curriculum gets more crowded with themes such as environmental, population and family life education, life skills, ICT, Peace and Conflict and civic education, improvement in new teaching techniques and teacher training must be developed. Likewise the poor performance of students in Mathematics, Science, and English in external examinations is a reflection of poor quality performance of teachers.

Since the beginning of the second half of the 1990s, the Policy began to put more focus on teacher management with a view to achieving efficiency and quality in the delivery of basic education. In 1995 a teachers’ census exercise was conducted by DOSE with a view to control the number of unqualified teachers and also to weed out any “ghost” teachers in the systems. The DOSE also adopted an exams system for recruitment of UQT setting minimum standards for their employment. It further restricted their employment to 20% of the total at the lower basic level and 10% at upper basic. Many qualified contract teachers, that is those who have already retired from the system, are also hired to help meet the shortfalls in teacher supply and to meet the policy target of 45:1 pupil/teacher ratio (PTR). This is combined with a policy of multi-grade teaching where appropriate, and where enough teachers are not available, some are asked to teach double-shift and are paid an additional salary equivalent to 50% of the salary.

The distribution of qualified teachers however is heavily skewed to the urban areas instead of the areas where they are most needed, namely the rural areas. This is largely due to the lack of an effective postings policy based on regional needs. In schools in remote areas, it is not unusual to find only one qualified teacher among the whole staff. This phenomenon needs to be addressed so as to achieve equity in quality of human resources (qualified teachers) distribution and to achieve the quality targets in all regions at the basic education level.

In order to increase the female qualified teachers, the Remedial Initiative for Female Teachers (RIFT) Programme was introduced at the Gambia College. This initiative was introduce to accelerate the participation of female qualified teachers, as their presence in the schools and in the education system is believed to boost girls’ education and to serve as role models to females who could be emulated.

6.6.Achievements – Teacher Supply

On teacher education and training, the Education Policy states that for enrolment to increase to 855 in the year 2003, the grades 1 – 6 teaching force will have to from 3370 to over 6000. This means that Gambia College is required to broaden the scope of its teacher training courses to meet the above target both at the PTC and HTC levels to adequately cater for teacher demand at the basic cycle and for secondary schools. To meet these targets at least 3000 additional trained teachers are needed at the primary level and the 900 and 600 additional trained teachers are needed for junior secondary and Senior Secondary Schools respectively.