Gateways into Learning: Promoting the Conditions which Support Learning for All

This Human Development Week 2000 session was hosted by the Effective Schools and Teachers, School Health and Quality Promotions Thematic Groups. The session co-ordinators were Kathryn Riley (session chair), Young Hoy Kimaro, Donald Bundy, Clementina Acedo, Gisele Dessieux and Mark Poston. This session had two main objectives. Firstly, to enable participants to identify the school and non-school factors which reduce learning opportunities for children and young people. Secondly, to enable them to gain an understanding of how opportunities can be widened through the adoption of policies and practices which are built on a more integrated approach to learning.

The impetus for the session sprang from growing concerns about the lack of access to education and learning opportunities, and from a determination to learn from the experiences of those involved in the field, about the kinds of reform initiatives and approaches which seem to be working. Education is a precious commodity, and yet one still denied to many children and young people. A range of school-related factors (such as the costs and location of schools), as well as external factors (such as poverty, attitudes about gender, conflict and ill-health) reduce access to learning. Attendance at school is not in itself a guarantee of access to learning. Despite enthusiasm on the ground, schools, particularly in the poorest countries, are often ill equipped to provide children and young people with a challenging and fulfilling education. Lack of connection between schools and communities; limited teaching styles; materials and approaches which fail to accommodate mother tongues; strategies which do not recognise that for many children schooling is not a continuous but a fragmented process, all combine to limit the impact of schools.

Summary

1)Education reform in ChileJuan Pablo Arellano(Minister of Education Chile),
Francoise Delannoy (World Bank)

This presentation described the key features of the education reforms which have been undertaken in Chile since the inception of the democratically elected government in 1990. The thrust of these reforms has been to improve the quality of schooling, reduce inequalities between rural and urban settings and re-dress the distrust and disillusionment that had grown up among teachers during years when education was a low government priority and teachers had suffered repeated pay cuts. The main feature of these reforms is the preservation of education structures to ensure stability and continuity whilst incrementally implementing a raft of integrated initiatives and reforms which:
1) promote school based innovation (through small scale financing of teachers projects),
2) curriculum reform (e.g. a national curriculum, libraries and computers in schools)
3) enhance teachers’ status (increased salary, study tours and training)
4) raise education on the political agenda.

2)Creating Child Friendly SchoolsSheldon Shaeffer, (Director of Education UNICEF)
Ward Heneveld (World Bank)

The notion of Child-Friendly schools is being used to expand current understandings of the role of schools in facilitating the development of children. At the heart of the notion of Child-Friendly schools is the recognition that schools have a role in promoting the healthy development of the emotional and physical aspects of a child as well as the intellectual. In order to do this, the school must co-opt the support of agents outside the boundaries of the school, including health services, religious institutions, justice and social welfare systems. It should aim to include all members of the community, especially those students who are currently not in school.

The idea of the Child-Friendly school can be seen as a policy and as a tool for school improvement. As such it can re-aligning priorities in education systems. Moving towards the goal of a Child Friendly school will inevitably depend on resources, political will and management capacity. It may be necessary to mark out more achievable intermediary goals to motivate agents who make changes in schools.

3)An Integrated Strategy to Improve LearningSam Onek, (Commissioner for
Primary Education, Uganda), Rosemary Bellew, (World Bank)

This presentation focused on reforms which have been developed over the last fourteen years to up-grade the teaching force in Uganda. A central feature of these reforms is the Teacher Development and Management Support (TDMS) which has instigated a structure of school clusters served by Co-ordinating Centre Tutors who function as intermediaries between Primary Teacher’s Colleges and school teachers. The CCTs have responsibility to act as facilitators of distance learning, support school management, help mobilize community support for schooling and child welfare, and monitoring training needs for teachers. The process of reform has not been without challenge and problems, these included: sequencing teacher training and school curricula, infrastructural difficulties and problems in recruiting CCTs. However, the use of school clusters has reduced costs to training institutions and it has provided on-going monitoring and support for teachers after they complete training.

Changing the inner workings of schools – Education Reform in Chile

Juan Pablo Arellano (Minister of Education, Chile)

In this presentation, Minister Arellano described the process of education reform in Chile over the last ten years. From this, four lessons are drawn about how to effectively enact policy change.

  1. Prior to reforms in 1990 the Chilean education system was characterised by:
  • A highly decentralised system including many subsidised private providers.
  • High enrolment but low student achievement (lower for students in rural areas).
  • Low teacher morale (a 25-40% drop in salary during the 1980s) and reduced enrolment for teacher training.
  • Education placed as a low government priority.
  1. The main aim of reform was to improve quality. The strategies to do this were:
  • Retain features of the existing system which did not threaten quality (the decentralised system was kept), and make incremental changes in those areas which did (nation-wide changes made only in 1996).
  • Policies which helped foster school/classroom based change.
  • Policies which targeted resources at schools with the greatest need.
  • Raise education as a political priority.
  1. The Menu of Initiatives included:
  • PME – a programme to provide financial support for teachers’ school based innovations.
  • A redefinition of the national curriculum which allowed some flexibility for schools.
  • An increase in salaries for teachers; a working conditions statute; incentives for teachers which included overseas study tours and more and better training.
  • More school hours: a longer school year (a cheap option) and a longer school day (an expensive option)
  1. The Results
  • Proportionately greater spending on education (spending in education grew faster than GDP in the period of 1986 to 1992)
  • Lower repeater rate; fewer students dropping out of school; increased learning outcomes; less inequity in learning outcomes.
  • An increased number of young people seeking work as teachers.
5.Policy Lessons: ingredients for successful education reform:
  • Continuity, stability, persistence.
  • A good policy mix includes: inputs to promote innovation, finances to promote teachers’ creativity and teamwork, curriculum reform (if implemented effectively), increases to learning time.
  • Targeting innovations: at areas needing quality improvement, at areas which can support quality improvement, through networks.
  • Accountability: national assessment of student learning.
Respondent: Francoise Delannoy (World Bank)

The Chilean example is unique. When the democratic government took power in 1990 it inherited a system which had introduced market reforms in the education sector, decentralisation, demand financing and which had adopted approaches to reform that a military government might use i.e. top down and big bang. The democratic government maintained this administrative and financial structure while simultaneously addressing quality improvement at the school level, using a bottom up approach.

Incrementalism

Reforms began by addressing the immediate concerns of those working in schools: fixing the roof, introducing textbooks. This led to increasingly sophisticated interventions as absorptive capacity for innovation improved. An example of this is in the way libraries were introduced first into schools, then into classroooms to promote students' independant learning. A number of programs were introduced across the board -- for rural multigrade schools, for the most at-risk schools, school computer network, etc... all supported by technical assistance -- but schools had some flexibility in joining as they demonstrated readiness.

School Based Innovation

Central to the reform process was the provision of competitive funding to provide opportunities for teachers to reflect on the school's problems and develop their own solutions. PME (School Improvement Project ) was a programme providing small scale financing for pedagogical, curricular or managerial innovations prepared collectively by the teaching team and supported by the community. Teacher training combined the normal centrally-driven format with a needs-based, bottom up, whole school approach. Professional networks were created within schools and among schools to break teachers' isolation. Through these initiatives as well as study tours, pay increases and premia to teachers, the ministry has been re-building teacher professionalism and a level of trust between teachers and the government.

Central Support for School Level Capacity Building

School-based approaches are indispensable but potentially vulnerable. To meet the challenge of going to scale, once there are a thousand innovations at the school level, there is a need to ensure that the school reaches out to the community, that its initiatives are supported by the system, and that both community and system hold the school accountable for children's learning results.

The Chilean story may raise the question: given the systemic nature of quality reform, where do you start in very deprived environments such as are found -- for example but not only -- in some parts of Africa ?

Questions:

The model seems perfect – did you encounter any problems?What were the main problems you faced?

While there were many problems one way to overcome these problems is to work to keep stability and continuity. Ensuring continuity in the personnel in planning teams is important, as is stability in resource allocation. Indeed it is better to have a stable and predictable resource allocation than to have a sudden, but unsustained increase in resources.

Would you put computers in schools a second time around? – What advice do you have for putting computers in school?

The value of using computers in schools has been to link rural schools to the urban centres (through the internet). It acts to give rural schools a sense that they are valued within the system and they also have access to additional resources.

Creating Child-Friendly Schools

Sheldon Shaeffer (UNICEF)

In this presentation Sheldon Shaeffer presented a framework for conceptualising a rights based child-friendly school.

  1. A rights based child-friendly school:
  • places the development of the “whole child” (physical, emotional and intellectual) at the centre of education policy;
  • is healthy, protective, effective and involves parents and communities;
  • extends beyond the boundaries of the school: it includes all children, actively seeks students not in school, promotes equality and eliminates stereotypes; takes account of students lives outside of school;
  • provides instruction which is child-centred, flexible to individual needs and affordable.
  1. It involves all social systems and agencies (e.g. justice, social welfare systems, religious institutions, health facilities as well as education systems) which impact on students personal, intellectual and physical development and all learning environments.
  2. A child-friendly school should positively impact on students’: health, enrolment, academic success, participation in the school. It should provide students with a sense of safety.
  3. A child-friendly school should positively impact on the school system by: motivating teachers and mobilising community support.
  1. Taking health into account in schools means promoting:
  • a healthy and hygienic environment, venue for health services;
  • life skills based health education, builds self-esteem and self confidence;
  • defends children from abuse, prejudice and discrimination (in and out of school).
  1. The child-friendly schools approach can be used as:
  • A normative goal for policies and programs
  • A focus for donor-government programming
  • A component of teacher training
  • A tool/goal for school quality improvement
  • A tool/goal for community mobilisation

The notion of the child-friendly school has been used in this way in the Philippines

Respondent: Ward Henneveld (World Bank)

The paper presents an ideal or a model towards which education systems might move. Currently schools are far from these ideals. Given the current levels of resourcing schools receive are these ideals appropriate? One way to reconsider this issue is to ask what are the conditions in this school which are critical now to the people to have to spend everyday there? Asking this question is one way to help teachers generate their own understanding of an ideal worth working towards. These ideals are likely to be different from place to place.

It may be helpful to consider C.E. Beeby’s idea of different levels of development or sophistication in school systems (Beeby 1968: The Quality of Education). Different systems are able to utilise different levels of resource input to different degrees, depending on the capabilities of the teachers. In the least sophisticated systems, teachers usually know which new resources they have the capacity to use. They should not be encumbered with expectations and tools that are beyond the reality of the context in which they work, including their own capacities. Similarly, in less sophisticated systems, decisions can be made higher up in the system if there is strong political will for educational change and the awareness to set ideals that teachers will see as possible. If you have an ideal and you subtract from it the reality, the difference has got to be something which will excite the people who are involved in making the changes.

Questions:

In the context of rural Africa, there is normally a clear separation between the community and the school, either conceptually or geographically – what specific proposals do you have for integrating the school and the community?

Often the distance between school and community results from a dismissive attitude from the school to the parents. Frequently the only connection between parents and schools is the demand for financial contributions. However, under current resourcing demands there is a tendency for governments to expand community based schooling projects and this may bring about examples and models of integration of communities and schools.

Teachers are being asked to enact policies which are far removed from their own experiences, similar demands are being made of policy maker. Furthermore there may be a very great length of time for evidence of improvement from new education policies. Given this situation, how do you get parents, teachers and, policy makers to buy in to reforms which are far removed from their own experiences?

Study tours may be one option – seeing new education practice through experiencing other systems. Political will may be an important point here also. Education reforms promoting child friendly schools may be more widely accepted when it is recognised that it does not cost an enormous amount of money.

There appears to be a charge that the list of items in a Child-Friendly school is too long. If so, who shortens that list?

A tool is more successful if the practitioners have ownership of them. This model may well be useful if it is employed in such a way that those who are engaged in making a change have thought of 80-90% of it for themselves. In an ideal system this would be undertaken at each school, for themselves. The reality is that there is a need for outside help. Technical assistance is required to nudge the system forward.

An Integrated Strategy to Improve Learning

Sam Onek (Commissioner for Primary Education, Uganda)

In this presentation Sam Onek described developments in Uganda’s education policy which have brought Uganda’s education system from a position of post-conflict destitution in 1986 to a position where education provision is steadily improving through a process of bottom up reforms.

  1. The civil conflict in Uganda, during the 1980s decimated Uganda’s education system. 70% of schools were destroyed, 50% of students were not in school and only 30% were completing the primary cycle, 56% of teachers were untrained and 70% of education costs were born by parents. (Currently GER is 122%, community involvement is now present in non-financial forms)
  2. In 1986 the Ugandan government placed emphasis on accomplishing the five Rs – reconstruction, rehabilitation, recovery, reform and reconciliation. Education stood at the centre of this programme. The Primary Education Reform Program (PERP) was introduced as a program of integrated policy reforms which aimed to improve both quality and access through addressing issues of:
  • Teachers pay, deployment, training and professional development
  • Curriculum reform together with examination reform
  • Resources: liberalising text book markets, improving school facilities
  • Management at the school level and throughout the system
  1. One reform was to rid the system of “ghost” teachers which resulted in a 25% reduction of the number of people on the pay-roll
  2. At the centre of these reforms was the development of TDMS: Teacher Development and Management Support which integrated a delivery mechanism with a teacher development system. TDMS provided in-service training, head teacher management training, teacher orientation on new reforms, as well as primary teacher education curriculum development and community mobilisation.
  3. The TDMS structure involved five levels of actors: community schools, Co-ordinating Centre Tutors (CCTs), core Primary Teacher Colleges (PTCs), district governments and the Ministry of Education.
  4. The one year TDMS management training is now integrated into a certificated exam for prospective head teachers and there are plans to link this to appointments. The training focuses on school leadership, team work and delegation, finance, community relations and the child focused school culture.
  5. School clusters have been formed around the Co-ordinating Centre Tutors (CCTs). The CCTs provide an interface between the traditional teacher training colleges and the schools. They facilitate teacher development at a distance as well as helping mobilise community support and providing training needs analysis.
  6. The CCTs main role is as a change agent in the local areas. They facilitate in school training, through observation, monitoring outreach students, providing guidance, involving head teachers in instructional improvement. They also facilitate school leadership. They also have a role in mobilising community support for enrolment and retention of boys and girls, the improvement of children’s nutrition and community involvement in monitoring school performance. They also have roles in designing and organising residential courses.

Challenges: