Report: Every Child Needs a Teacher: Closing the Trained Teacher Gap

October 5th is World Teachers' Day, so it seems fitting to provide an excerpt from the report from the Global Campaign for Education entitled Every Child Needs a Teacher: Closing the Trained Teacher Gap.

The report on teacher training and poor conditions faced by teachers: 

'Some countries count those who have completed primary school and a one-month training course as trained, while others require a three-year education degree. Even with these flexible and often low standards, a third of countries report that no more than half of their pre-primary school teachers are trained; at primary level, reported rates are slightly higher, but thirty one countries report that fewer than three quarters of teachers are trained (to any accepted national standard) and a number report falling levels of training. In Mali, where half of primary school teachers are trained, only a quarter have had training lasting six months or longer. Nearly half of countries reporting training levels at lower secondary level state that fewer than three quarters of teachers are trained. Niger had just 1,059 trained lower secondary school teachers in 2010 – compared to 1.4 million children of lower secondary school age. 

[...] 

The overwhelming lesson is that high quality education requires sufficient recruitment of teachers who are trained, supported, paid and managed as professionals. The recruitment of low-skill, untrained teachers in recent decades has proved disastrous for education quality - and much current training provision needs improvement. Teachers are paid paltry amounts, for example just $125 a month in Niger; many have to travel long distances to collect pay that is often days, weeks or even months late. A motivated, highly skilled teacher workforce produces the best education; yet too often teachers are treated as low-grade service delivery employees, expected to deliver classes and administer tests according to a script, and rewarded or punished on the basis of test scores. The deprofessionalisation of teachers denies students the possibility of great teaching.'

I couldn't agree more with this statement: 'A motivated, highly skilled teacher workforce produces the best education; yet too often teachers are treated as low-grade service delivery employees' .

What is your experience as a teacher? Have you felt supported, or undervalued by your school? Is too much pressure placed upon teachers? What can help teachers perform their best, and therefore help bring out the best in students?

Worth reading the report in full - you can find it here. 

Grade inflation - time to give in?

An interesting debate and not something exclusive to the USA. Every year when GCSE or A-Level results come out in the UK talk of grade inflation fills the news.

Chris Blattman suggests here that we shouldn't resist 'the new equilibrium'. Having marked students' work myself, I kind of agree with this. As Chris Blattman suggests, surely it's all relative? So, for example if there are only five piles of graded work ranging from A+ to B-, in theory is this not the same as the graded work in five piles ranging from A to E? And I hesitate to add: the B- therefore being equivalent to the E...or have I been subjected to too much of a private school mentality?! Or do certain grades have connotations and therefore an A- will always be viewed (subconsciously) as better than a B despite the fact their quality is the same (given that they would both be in the second pile of graded work).

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on this and Chris Blattman's suggestion that we should go with the flow. 

One of the most important things we can teach youth

Thanks to a comment on a LinkedIn discussion based on this blogpost, I was pointed in the direction of the work of Kiran Bir Sethi. It got me thinking about what it is that we should be teaching youth particularly in marginalised communities or refugee situations. They are surrounded by negativity of one form or another: stigma, being told they're not good enough, poverty, unrealised dreams. 

What then should we be teaching them? As Kiran suggests, the concept of: I can. Now we've all heard about positive thinking, but somehow we've all assumed this is something applicable to adult life, that kids somehow sail through easily without the doubts and negative thoughts creeping in. Kiran's ideas show how important 'I can' is in youth life and the impact it can have on their lives as well as - and arguably more importantly - that of the society at large, and the community in which they live. 

Here is a link to a TED talk in which Kiran explains the concept much more powerfully than I do. Well worth a watch, if only to see how the word 'infection' can be used in a positive context. 

Mr Mandela on the power of education

I saw this and just had to share:

Courtesy of: http://www.motivationblog.org/nelson-mandela-quote-poster/#.UDKrvamPXup 

Interested in Alternative Education?

In light of a previous post on changing education paradigms, the Education Revolution - Alternative Education Resource Organisation website proves an interesting resource on Alternative Education. It is a global network of innovators and resources such as links to information on homeschooling, Montessori schooling, and even job listings for those in the States. There are also a variety of articles on various aspects of Alternative Education.

Check out the website here. 

Was the current system of education designed for a different age?

One of the important questions Sir Ken Robinson answers in this must-watch video on Changing Education Paradigms.

Sir Ken Robinson suggests that children have been 'anaesthetised' to get through schooling, and instead we should be waking them up to discover what is inside of themselves. If this is the case then, the question is: at what stage do children learn what is inside themselves under the current education norms?

He also mentions that we need to go in the exact opposite direction of standardisation - I do agree, however struggle with how this plays out in practice. Is this why more and more people are turning towards homeschooling? Are schools currently stifling the critical - or divergent, as Sir Ken Robinson calls it - thinking abilities of children? It would be great to hear your thoughts.

Quick note: The video constantly refers to education, however I think that Sir Ken Robinson is talking about schooling. For more on the difference between schooling and education, take a look at this previous post. 

Madaar - volunteers needed!

Madaar - Open Islamic Curriculum is a project I am involved with, and we're currently looking for volunteers. If you have some time to spare - no matter how much - then get in touch, or please forward on to someone who might be interested.

Check out why you should help us here. For more about the project, take a look here. 

Education vs. Schooling - the same but different?

Apologies for the lack of blogging over the past week: I've been away from decent internet access, and I admit enjoying a bit of a blogging break as well.

I recently went to a seminar on the Capabilities Approach and the potential for it in helping to eradicate inequality in schools. One thing that I noticed was many people at the event were using the terms education and schooling as interchangeable terms. I think this needs to be questioned.

We might assume that learning and therefore education is 'happening' in schools, however how does schooling differ from education in general? Of course schooling is confined by age, education on the other hand is not. The main difference as I see it though is that on the whole schooling is something driven by the state, and therefore the content needs to come under close scrutiny. What is the purpose of the schooling agenda? State-building? Helping children to become good or better citizens?

Rather than giving schooling and education a definition myself, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Is there one universal definition for both terms, or is it really dependent upon context? Does 'real' independent - here meaning non-state defined - learning only take place once we are adults? Do we question enough the content of the curricula in schools, or do we just assume that the state knows what our children should be learning?  

Get discussing below! 

    

How important is the language of instruction in education?

Struggling in school is something that no doubt comes with the territory, all these new concepts flying around in your head – it’s meant to be a challenge. What is not meant to be the challenging element however is the language you’re taught in. 

The fact that it is hard to come by statistics highlighting the number of students learning in languages other than their mother-tongue, or in fact in their mother-tongue displays that the area remains a low priority for the international development community. Despite advocacy initiatives such as International Mother Language Day (celebrated on 21 February annually) many children continue to learn in this way – left little choice but to learn using ineffective models of the past. For example, Africa remains the most linguistically diverse region on the planet with the number of languages on the continent in the thousands. In terms of schooling however very few of these are utilised as the language of instruction (in part because many of these languages remain oral). Instead, colonial languages such as French or English are used. Although lingua francas, they are not the first language of the majority of speakers of these languages, meaning students struggle through their schooling years – if they complete the complete system at all – grappling with both new concepts in an unfamiliar language, when their primary concern should be the new concepts themselves.

To give some country examples, we can look at the research of Brock-Utne (2007) who highlights the postcolonial hangover in Tanzania. Evidence shows the negative impact of monolingual instruction upon learning – students engage in the simple accumulation of knowledge without critical consciousness, with pressure on teachers remaining high who maintain ‘safe talk’ when teaching in a language – such as English – other than their mother-tongue. Closed questions such as: Do you understand? resound in the classroom – hardly encouraging the response of no. The illusion of quality learning therefore remains, and students struggle through.

Pinnock (2009) of Save the Children UK is one of the researchers on the forefront of such issues and highlights that in multilingual societies where monolingual models are used high dropout rates are apparent as well as greater impact upon the society as a whole in terms of segregation and political instability (contrary to the belief that multilingual instruction would lead to such consequences). Repetition rates are evidently reduced with the bilingual model -  whereby the mother-tongue is used for instruction and supplemented with second language classes - as shown in Guatemala for example, where the repetition rate was highlighted to approximately halve in a study by Patrinos and Velez (1996) (World Bank).

The EFA goals have proposed quality education as one of the targets, therefore language needs to be considered – without this it needs to be recognised that the goals are likely to remain figments of the imagination; ideal concepts never to be achieved. Of course language alone cannot solve the problem, however it comprises a massive proportion of the element of quality which has entered the global rhetoric since the reiteration of the EFA goals in Dakar in 2000.

Perceptions of local languages are part of the problem – something which needs to be remedied as a matter of urgency. The impact of globalisation and the consequent growth and spread of English is partially at fault. However, it remains continually important to remind the international community that learning through English and learning it as a second language are two entirely different ball games. Of course it needs to be stated that doing away with all English taught programmes is also unlikely to be successful, rather contexts need to be examined, and most importantly learning outcomes of the students involved need to be analysed.

The emergence of networks such as the MTB-MLE Network highlights that focus on the importance of language of instruction for quality learning is growing, but more needs to be done if relevant, quality education is to be achieved. We need to move past the rhetoric to actually implement linguistic rights – it’s a huge task given that learning materials need to be changed, however if the rights documentation exists, the international community needs to be accountable for what is written in it. They cannot simply remain hollow promises. If action isn’t going to be taken, then the rights documents (which refer to the right of learning in mother-tongue) may as well not exist at all.

Some recommendations 

• Needs assessments with communities need to be carried out to determine attitudes towards local languages and feelings towards learning in English. 
• The link between quality education and relevant language needs to be established and used as a driving force to achieve goals such as EFA. 
• The importance of mother-tongue instruction needs to be mainstreamed i.e. not remain a minorities’ issue as it is at present. 

What do you think?

Do you have experience of implementing bilingual or multilingual models? Have you seen the side effects of learning in languages other than the mother-tongue? Do current advocacy campaigns oversimplify the practicalities of implementing mother-tongue/bilingual models? It'd be great to hear from you - share your comments and stories below.

You can also comment via Twitter: @GEDBlog

Education in the Africa Progress Report 2012

From the Africa Progress Report 2012:

'Looking towards 2015, there is an unfortunate air of resignation hanging over much of the region. Many governments and donors appear to view a large shortfall against the MDG targets in education as an inevitable outcome. Indeed, much of the debate surrounding the MDGs in education has moved on to dialogue on the “post-2015” agenda.   

Without discounting the importance of this dialogue, the shift in priorities is premature. As many countries across the region have demonstrated, rapid progress towards the 2015 goals is possible. Both Tanzania and Ethiopia reduced out-of-school numbers by over 3 million in the first half of the decade after 2000. The immediate challenge for governments and their development partners is to identify strategies aimed at getting more children into school, reducing dropout rates and improving learning achievement levels.  

Some of the barriers to participation in education can be swiftly removed through well-designed policies. 

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The more difficult part revolves around teaching. Ultimately, no education system is better than its teachers. With a deficit of around 1 million teachers, Africa urgently needs to step up recruitment. However, far more needs to be done to raise the quality of teaching. Many of Africa’s teachers enter classrooms with limited subject knowledge. One survey found that fewer than half of grade 6 teachers in Mozambique, Uganda and Malawi were able to score at the top of the competency level for the pupils. Teaching is typically delivered in rote fashion, reflecting training systems that regard “child-centred learning” as an alien concept. In-service support systems are weak. And whether as a result of low morale, poor pay or a lack of accountability, Africa’s schools are plagued by an epidemic of teacher absenteeism.'

Check out the Report for more on what more can be done for education across various different African countries. 

Say what?

Nice video (from Save the Children UK) following on from yesterday's post on languages of instruction.