COMPASS+PHOTO+SERIES

What are you trying to achieve? In Bangladesh, the quality of primary education is exacerbating due to proper management of the systems. Apparently, government is spending a lot for improving the situation though the situation is not changing because of the concerted effort of the stake holders. Thus, every year we can see a number of students are being dropped out from the secondary schools. The secondary school authorities are often alleging the standard of education at primary level for which the students of secondary are not being able to cope up with the situation. This proposal is aiming to address the issue of developing the situation by engaging the community people, guardians, philanthropists from community, leaders, school authority, three student representatives, representative of local education office and local government representatives. A quality assessment procedure will be developed where the curriculum, syllabus and teaching quality will be assessed. Teachers will be encouraged to collaborate with each other on the best practices of the classes. We mustn’t forget that the teachers are the key players of this intervention and if we can give them the confidence that all the tasks are developed for their professional development they will happily cooperate with the system.  In addition, to pull back the dropped out students into the mainstream education, this proposal will bring an idea to ensure the standard of overall education at primary level. To address the proposed plan to be executed in the field representative from the education office will be selected to lead the initiative as traditionally we are following the government’s legislation.
 * __COMPASS : Community interventions On Primary school Achievement Situations and Systems__**

How will your initiative lead to positive change? At present, the above mentioned stake holders are involved in the school management committee but they are not looking after the system within any framework and to some extent they are just doing their job in a piece meal way. For example, the education officer is hardly following up the system by visiting the schools, not all the head teachers are checking whether the teaching learning processes are continuing according to the guideline provided by the government or the parents are just coming to the school individually and there is no coordination among the stakeholders on their communication, observed details or sharing findings. Thus, the quality can’t be ensured in that way. If we can bring all the stake holders under one umbrella and design an assessment tool to justify the performance of school, school authority and teachers, we will be able to see a qualitative change in the performance of the school, teachers and administration. The reasons for dropouts will be identified which is the other concern of this proposal and also for pulling back the dropouts necessary steps should be designed by this team. Who are the key players? As within the system of the current policies, the education evaluation and management is supposed to regulate by the local education office, the proposed programme will be spearheaded by the representative of local education office. For the better management of the system a strong school management committee will be formed with the leadership of the local government representatives and the other members will be the educated guardians, teachers’ representatives, student representatives and local philanthropists ( educationists of other institution). This committee will be sitting in the discussion fortnightly to manage the anomalies. As can be seen from the above list, a big chunk for this venture is representing the community; the voice will be heard from the bottom to the top.  How does it work?  To generate the assessment system, the schools head will at first develop a tool to check the teaching standards. All the tools will develop by the school management committee considering different aspects of teaching learning, facilities and collecting voices from the bottom. The voices of students should be collected on the different aspects e.g. classroom teaching learning, behavior, school facilities, etc. Then, the school head will discuss the issue with the teachers at first and then with the whole report, the school head will join the school management committee meeting. Meanwhile, the local philanthropist, specially the educationist will observe few classes and sit with students and teachers to inquire about the situations. All the reports of this group will be shared with the local government representativeswho will later share result in the school management committee. As for addressing the drop outs issue to bring back to the school local students clubs or organizations can be contacted for extending support to the slow learners who are lagging behind the competency level. This might the collaboration that I may need for this venture.  What are the risks and opportunities? The main risks for this venture might be the role of the representative of the education officer. The existing allegation of nepotism and corruption from the top level is a challenge. The political influence of the local leaders with the school administration might be hindrances of this process. In addition the teachers feeling to be regulated by the external authorities could be other challenges for this intervention As for the addressing the drop outs issue, it might be difficult to counsel and encourage the students who already left and out of school.  To address the challenges, as I mentioned earlier, motivation and collaboration is needed for the concerted effort to give a better service to the institutions. Teachers should be motivated for the professional development in a non threatening manner and the external representatives will be trained to prepare guidelines what and how to deal with the situations to avoid discrepancies. The local government has to play a vital role to aware the guardians to send their children regularly to the school and to speak up to the authority regarding the quality issue.

 How will you know if it is successful? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Certain indicators have to fix to judge the progression of this initiatives. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> For students’ performances, we can look into <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> For school performance we can see · <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">overall performances of the school. · <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">attendance of the students · <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">health and hygiene report · <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the school dropouts
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the achievement scale that will be developed by the teachers under the school management committee.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the school dropouts
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">the performances at secondary level
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">summative evaluation (conducted centrally by the education officer) to judge the competency level.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;"> For teachers’ performance


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">head teachers’ assessment report
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">students’ performances (subject wised)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">initiatives for professional development (e.g training, workshops, curricular activities)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">students reflections on teaching and learning
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">pedagogical changes and fruitful reflections on the performances individually and from collaborating.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">collaboration with the local students for pulling back the dropouts

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">As we are focusing on the quality of the primary school education, I think if we can bring the voices together with the above mentioned indicators to judge the performance, we can justify the success.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">For some indicators we can check the progression monthly in the meeting of school management committee. For some indicators we have to consider quarterly report with which the committee goes along with the formative assessment.