5 Operational Strategy: Improving Quality and Relevance » Up

The reforms include six main strategies for ensuring improved quality and efficiency of education services, summarised as:

» Education service efficiency and productivity improvement

» Decentralised school/institution operational planning and management

» Sustainable instructional materials provision

» Decentralised teacher development planning and management

» Improved curricular relevance (e.g., Life Skills)

Support for innovative educational practice (e.g., child friendly schools)

This integrated strategy recognises that quality improvement needs to take account of broader education staff deployment strategies and programs. The programs also are based on an assumption that improving standards, monitoring and dissemination of information on these standards can enhance accountability and strengthen the demand from parents for effective and relevant education. Finally, this strategy recognizes that quality must be defined more broadly than in terms of "educational efficiency" and that support for changed classroom practice and child friendliness in schools must be key components of all quality initiatives.

For Education Service Efficiency and Productivity Improvement, the main strategies and targets are :

» Continued consultation with the NPAR to ensure that education system staff requirements due to expansion are met and education staff remuneration policies and plans are consistent with broader Government reforms.

» Improved efficiency in planning and deployment of teaching and non-teaching staff in primary and secondary schools, through: (i) revised Government-agreed PTR-based staff planning norms; (ii) related staffing guidelines for school; (iii) strengthening of norm enforcement mechanisms.

» Extensive redeployment of non-teaching staff into classroom teaching positions, through limiting the prime pedagogique to classroom teachers and other incentives.

» Extensive re-deployment of teaching and non-teaching staff from schools with excess staff to those suffering deficits, against revised staffing guidelines.

Increased remuneration for all education managers, teacher trainers and teaching staff, through a combination of basic civil service pay rises and incremental increases to the prime pedagogique.

» » Performance-based targeted incentives for core groups of education managers and teaching staff, especially for personnel providing efficiency and productivity gains.

» Strengthened appraisal and regulation of minimum standards of staff performance and workloads, alongside development of CAR approved incentive/sanction mechanisms for enforcement.

» Formulation of a strategic framework for well defined career paths for education managers and teaching staff (i.e. Education Statuts Particuliers) as a basis for supply/ demand staff requirement planning, training and pay reform.

For Decentralised School/Institution Operational Planning and Management, the main strategies and targets are:

» Improved school performance and school/parents' committee management of poverty-indexed pre-schooling, primary and secondary school operational budgets, through district-managed PAP budget allocations.

» Improved institutional performance and institution-managed operational budgets for teacher training institutions, linked to annual development plans via the PAP mechanism.

» Improved district-level technical and financial operational planning and management, through district budget management centers in cooperation with the cluster school network assuming greater accountability for PAP and other programming.

» Improved school/institution performance monitoring at provincial and central levels, through standard setting and increased operational budgets for monitoring operations.

For Sustainable Instructional Materials Provision, the main strategies and targets are :

» Assuring sustainable financing of instructional materials by Government, through affordable and efficient primary and secondary school curriculum review relevant to social, civic and economic development.

» Equitable access to core textbooks and selected complementary/supplementary materials for grades 1 - 9, through adequate annual Government budget provision.

» Adequate provision of instructional materials for basic education facilities and teacher training institutions, through agreed PAP mechanisms and targets.

» Decentralisation of the planning and management of instructional materials provision, through annual allocations to schools, via the PAP mechanism.

» Improved efficiency in the publishing and distribution of core instructional materials, through establishment of the publishing and distribution house as a public enterprise under effective legislation, regulation and management.

» Assuring improved impact on quality of teaching/learning of instructional materials, through annual textbook orientation programs and strengthened monitoring systems.

For Decentralised Teacher Development Planning and Management, the main strategies and targets are:

» Coordinated teacher supply/demand planning systems, taking account of enrolment expansion and revised staff deployment guidelines, through new MoEYS technical committees, including personnel, finance, planning and teacher training departments as well as relevant line ministries.

» Increased delegation of authority to teacher training institutions and provincial/district authorities to plan new teacher training intakes against agreed MoEYS guidelines.

» Increased intake into provincial and regional teacher training colleges, including greater flexibility in institutions preparing primary and lower secondary school teachers. Increased operational autonomy to teacher training institutions, through provision of annual operational budgets against agreed intake levels and staffing norms.

» Improved quality and relevance of pre-service teacher (PRESET) training programs for basic education, through school and teacher training curriculum reform and development (e.g. for multi subject, multi grade, ethnic minority teaching, life skills) and accredited staff development.

» Assuring an adequate supply of teachers from remote and ethnic minority areas, through active recruitment from these areas, special incentives and flexibility in entry requirements and program duration.

» Improved responsiveness of teacher training institutions to in-service teacher (INSET) training requirements (both school-based and non-school-based), through increased operational autonomy to run programs against agreed MoEYS guidelines, especially those that use the cluster school network.

» For Improved Curricular Relevance (e.g., Life Skills), the main strategies and targets are:

» Support for efforts to develop and revise curricula that integrate life skills within the current learning program for grades 1 to 9 including such areas as agriculture, child care, family budgeting, civics, environment, health, and nutrition. The intention in developing such curricula will be to act as an incentive to keep children in school by making learning useful to families and children themselves in later life.

» Continued support for new life skills initiatives such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) that provide extracurricular opportunities for children to learn about their environment using hands-on approaches

» Training of teachers at both in-service and pre-service levels to be able to use new curricula of increased relevance in a hands-on manner.

» Provision of any needed materials that may be implied in new curricula using PAP mechanisms.

For Support to Educational Innovation at all levels, the main strategies and targets include:

» Continued support for innovative pilots that promote critical and creative thinking, improved psychosocial learning environments, inclusivity, better health, and parental engagement.