NPC Managing Change in Education Report - Full Version NEW READY
Transcript of NPC Managing Change in Education Report - Full Version NEW READY
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Forward
This paper was commissioned by the Chief Secretary, Northern Province, one of the key
partners of the GTZ supported Performance Improvement Project (PIP). It was written as
a response to his request for a strategy paper on cohesion and change management with
specific reference to effective disbursement of donor funds for education projects in the
Northern Province. Putting together such a document serves to carry out PIPs mandate
to strengthen the capacity of the Chief Secretarys Office in coordination, planning and
management, so that intermediary departments - in this case the Provincial Ministry of
Education, Northern Province - deliver improved services to the community.
Similar strategy papers and strategy workshops have been commissioned from GTZ PIP
by the Chief Secretaries in the past for tsunami recovery, institutional and
organisational analyses, as commissioned by the former Chief Secretary, North East
Provincial Council; for staff appraisal as commissioned by the Chief Secretary, Eastern
Province and for improving budget formulation as commissioned by the Chief
Secretaries, Northern and Eastern Provinces.
It is not the intention of the GTZ supported Performance Improvement Project to
hereafter get involved in education reform for the Northern Province, but to continue to
support the Chief Secretarys Office in on-going issues of coordination, planning and
management.
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"In some cases the education sector has contributed to the problem of skills shortage (an
important aspect of capacity deficit) by producing graduates with non-marketable skills,
or too few graduates with the right skills."
Making Government Work for the Poor Building State Capability,
Strategy Paper, London, DFID Information Department, 2001
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Contents
List of abbreviations 1
1. Introduction 2
2. Coherence 6
3. Managing change in education 10
4. Exams 19
5. Curriculum standards 21
6. Textbooks 25
7. Capacity building 26
8. Quality assurance 30
9. Summary of recommendations 32
10. Next steps 36
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List of abbreviations
AusAID Australian Agency for International Development
CfBT Centre for British TeachersDfEE Department for Education and Employment (British Government)
DfID Department for International Development (British Government)
FCE First Certificate English
GTZ German Technical Cooperation
HRD Human Resource Development
ISA In-Service Advisor
ISMEQuE Improving School Management to Enhance Quality Education
INSET In-Service Teacher Education
JICA Japanese International Cooperation Agency
KET Key English Test
MDTD Management Development Training Department, Trincomalee
NIE National Institute of Education
PET Preliminary English Test
PIP Performance Improvement Project
PISET Provincial In-service Secondary Education and Training project
PRESET Pre-Service Teacher Education
RESC Regional English Support Centres
TELT Training for English Language Teaching Communities Project
UCLES University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate
UNICEF United Nations International Emergency Fund
USAID United States Agency for International Development
ZDE Zonal Director of Education
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1. Introduction
1.1 Background
The primary and secondary school system is failing the majority of secondary school
leavers in most of Sri Lankas schools outside the main urban centres failing to providethem with the necessary skills to become productive and effective members of a changing
society. Year after year the vast majority of students fail their exams while a tiny minority
of best students learn how to be successful in school, not how to be successful in life. The
best are measured in terms of school behaviour, passing exams, being good at schooling.
They dont learn life skills, job skills, communication skills, critical thinking. Many do not
graduate as initiative-taking, responsible individuals who can be relied on to solve
problems or complete tasks independently with some sense of quality. Less than 2% get
into university. For many others, going to school is just counting the days till
unemployment.
Sri Lanka is a country without curriculum standards expressed in can do statements. It
does not measure success at school by competency in useful skills. Attendance is the main
criteria for achievement. Attendance at the right school is the main criteria for
excellence. Quality is assured by teachers covering a certain number of pages in a
textbook and students memorising the limited information on those pages. As a result real
life skills are on the decline. Literacy and numeracy rates are falling. Sri Lanka is one of
the few countries in the world which is unable to sustain its almost 100% literacy rate of
former decades. Traditional skills and values are being lost but new skills in the new
technologies are not taking their place.
There is a general malaise in the education system in Sri Lanka, a malaise which has notoccurred overnight but which has been systematically eroding best practice for more than
forty years eroding educational standards, expectations, resources and values. It is the
result of mismanagement by
a nation that is not yet prepared to put its money where its mouth is to finance
large scale educational reform because it lies at the heart of any economic, social or
political improvement for Sri Lanka;
a handful of so-called curriculum experts who have failed to be influenced by
current education research or innovation in the world around them, and have failed
to consult the captains of industry, the changing technological world, or those who
understand the real requirements of producing an educated work force;
higher education specialists who set standards, train teachers, advise on exams andcurricula who are out of touch with the realities and real needs of primary and
secondary school students and teachers;
officials who think they know all about education simply because they have had a
privileged one themselves, in an English medium school in Colombo or Kandy or
Jaffna;
politicians who do not get involved with something they will never get the credit for
because they realise educational reform takes 10 to 12 years to show a difference - a
time scale beyond their term of office;
parents who do not have the education themselves to challenge the inadequacies of
the system;
overworked, underpaid and often under qualified school administrators and teachers.
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Ethnic identity and conflict have had two lasting effects on the Sri Lankan education
system. On the one hand, education has become more nationalistic, less inclusive,
stressing the language and values of the ethnic majority. This results in tighter controls on
national textbooks and the dissemination of resources. On the other hand education has
failed to evolve. There is almost no change when we compare textbooks and curriculafrom the 1980s with the current ones. In some cases the 1980s books are better than the
ones today. There has been virtually no change in the way teachers are trained, exams are
compiled, lessons are planned, achievements are recorded. At the same time standards
have slipped. The cascade has thinned out, teacher trainers and curriculum writers have
fewer skills today than they did in the past because they in turn are the products of a
quietly deteriorating system.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has moved on. If we observe educational reform in other
developing and newly industrialised countries (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Qatar), even
industrial countries whose needs have changed (Britain, France), we see countries who
have gone for far-reaching, and on the whole, de-politicised, educational reform in orderto meet the growing or evolving demands of industry, the economy and multi culturalism.
These reforms include:
privatising textbook production - purchasing textbooks from professional writers
and private publishing houses instead of relying on the idiosyncrasies,
inefficiencies and control of government publishing houses
incorporating language corpus data in first and second language teaching to focus
on high frequency structures and vocabulary
incorporating critical thinking skills through maths, science and mother tongue
literacy teaching from early primary onwards
expressing learning and teaching in terms of competencies and can do statements
establishing curriculum and textbook standards which are transparent and
accountable to parents and students as well as school inspectors and examiners
scientifically testing the validity and reliability of test items on national exams
using criterion referenced assessment instead of norm referencing to measure
achievement
including a much higher percentage of informal (school based/project based), on-
going assessment to compliment assessment by traditional exams
incorporating participatory, learner centred, task based approaches to teaching and
learning.
If these innovations have not happened in Sri Lanka as a whole, they have happened even
less in the Northern Province, where open conflict, natural disaster, acute lack of access,resources and teachers, and a resulting brain drain, erode the system still further.
[It is important to note that incorporating information technology and computer assisted
learning does not appear on the above list, nor indeed in the rest of the report. In this
report, IT in schools in the Northern Province is seen as a divisive; a way of spending
donor money while avoiding the bigger issues listed above. Until schools have electricity
and dust-free air conditioned computer rooms, until school directors are prepared to find
and employ qualified IT personnel who can maintain equipment and systems, until the
North has internet connectivity, until relevant school software has been developed as
learning packages, until school budgets include broadband payments and virus protection
software, and until teachers receive training across the curriculum in how toincorporate IT into teaching their subjects, there is little point pursuing the IT agenda.]
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1. 2 Purpose of this strategy paper
What must the Provincial Ministry of Education do to convince a wider range of school
stake-holders school principles, supervisors, exam writers, department heads, teachers,
curriculum writers, examiners, parents and the children themselves of the need to reformteaching and learning in the Northern Province?
This paper sets out to list some of the changes that should be made in order to improve
educational system in terms of content and process, with special reference to the Northern
Province. It
suggests ways of managing and implementing change change in curriculum,
textbooks, classrooms, exams, school inspections and school-leavers heads
challenges the thinking behind what policy makers and school authorities do with
primary and secondary education in Sri Lanka
explores strategies for involving school stake-holders and making them more
supportive of educational change
looks strategically at where change can begin
shows how, by understanding the bigger picture, education reformists can find a
place to start
suggests ways donor money can be spent on individual reform components that add
up to a larger and more systematic reform programme.
1.3 Sources
The principles, best practices and lessons learnt in this paper are derived from The Department for Education and Employments literacy and numeracy reform in
primary education in Britain, (John Stannard, Director of the National Literacy
Strategy and Anita Straeker, Director of the National Numeracy Strategy) 1996
2002
The development of national competency and performance curriculum standards for
Qatar in Maths, Science, English and Arabic, Grades 1 13 according to a
competency based approach (The Supreme Education Council supported by RAND
and CfBT), 2003 2006
The British Vietnamese Governments development of provincial-based teachertraining systems and national exams for grade 6 9 English in 22 provinces of
Vietnam (Psyche Kennett, DFID/CfBT), 1997 2003
The UKs Department for International Development support for educational reform
in primary Maths and primary and secondary English in Sri Lanka (British Council
and Cambridge Consultants), 1994 - 2002
The USAID/UNICEF funded English Language Teaching Communities Project
(TELT) in Jaffna and Trincomalee, (Amy Hamlyn, British Council), 2004 - 2005.
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Descriptions of education reform theory and practice can be followed up in
Earl, L, Katz, S and Watson, N (2003) Large - Scale Reform: Life Cycles and
Implications for Sustainability, CfBT
Elmore, R. F. (1996) Getting to scale with good educational practiceHarvardEducational Review, 66(1), 1-26
Fullan, M. (2001) The new meaning of educational change (3rd edition) New York:
Teachers College Press
Fullan, M et al (2003) Watching & Learning 3, Final Report of the External
Evaluation of England's National Literacy and National Numeracy Strategies,
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Hall, G., & Hord, S. (2001) Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes,
London: Allyn & Bacon
Togneri, W., & Anderson, S. (2003) Beyond islands of excellence. Washington, DC:
The Learning First Alliance
Watson, N (2003) English Language Teacher Training Project (ELTTP) Vietnam,
Report of Evaluation Consultancy CfBT (Research and Development Committee)
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2. Coherence
2.1 Coherence and sustainable educational reform
Coherence means promoting the same methodological message across curricula, materials,
school levels, subjects and institutions so that it can be reinforced efficiently and sochange can happen in a sustainable way. Most government systems and ministries of
education, including those in the US and the UK, lack coherence, because different
systems grow organically, idiosyncratically, and all the while new policy is adopted
without throwing out old.
The history of educational change and reform is replete with examples of innovations that
had an impressive impact on teaching and learning. Such innovations generate enthusiasm
and effort, but once the project ends, so does the innovation. When changes are associated
with a specific project, they rarely survive changes in staff or administrative arrangements.
The challenge is to embed the changes to build them into the education system.
Instead of being 'one more thing' the innovation becomes 'the way we do things here in the
Northern Province. Only then do new procedures and behaviours become the norm.
Only then are changes likely to be sustained.
Building change into the system in this way is not easy. Several aspects of the educational
system need to be changed to give a coherent message about what is expected. There is
little point in changing teaching methods or textbooks if students or teachers continue to
be judged by old-style examinations. If the examinations are not aligned with the new
approaches, teachers would be well advised to continue their old methods if these are
successful in preparing students for the kind of examination used. In other words, policies
and practices need to be aligned in such a way that curriculum, assessment and even
teacher education are based on similar principles about teaching and learning.
Working at project level, it is possible to achieve internal coherence, but coherence has to
go beyond project outputs to include the sustaining authorities and the institutions that also
influence what goes on in the classroom. Typically this means that although projects are
usually the baby of one department in the central or provincial ministry of education,
they must establish institutional links with many others.
2.1 Curricula coherence: reforming curricula, exams and textbooks
In the past many of Sri Lankas educational reforms have centred either on infrastructure -
school buildings, furniture and equipment, science labs, supply of textbooks, sports
facilities - or on pre-service or in-service teacher training usually within a single subject
area like English or Maths. This is because most educational reform in the past three
decades has depended on foreign funding. From the Sri Lankan side, foreign technical
interventions in school infrastructure and teacher training are non-threatening. From the
donors side, the emphasis, until recently, has been on resource centres and classroom
methodology.
However, educational reform has to cover content as well as process. School facilities andteacher training are only half the picture - they are the process of education. Education
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reform must also include curricula, textbook and examination reform they are the
content of education. It is quite usual for a host government to allow a donor to help
implement a new teacher training system, but it is unusual for a host government to invite
outsiders to re-write the textbooks, the curriculum or the exam. Usually curricula,
textbooks and exams come under the purview of a politically selected few an elite who
control the futures of millions of children. They dictate what children will learn and whatthey will not, how they will name the world around them, how they will integrate or not
integrate with children from other ethnic communities, how they will think, analyse, solve
problems for themselves. In short, curriculum writers and examiners determine how future
generations will be equipped or at a loss to deal with the needs of their rapidly changing
environment.
Reforming education content is a major task which usually requires strong political will
because it involves upheaval and a challenging of the old ways. Tony Blairs strategies for
primary education in Britain and the Emir of Qatars alternative school system and
curriculum were both massive undertakings, in terms of money, time and labour, and in
both cases they needed the backing of the nations parents, to succeed. In Britain, studentsgot a new literacy and numeracy curriculum and a dedicated extra hour for each per day.
In Qatar, new, secularised curricula for Maths, Science, Arabic and English were
introduced from Kindergarten through to Grade 12 (their last year of high school) and
parents were queuing up to get their children out of the old Ministry schools and registered
in the new Emir-supported system.
Without such political will from the centre, it is hard for any provincial ministry to reform
the content of the curriculum or textbook or exam. Creating an alternative or parallel
system and allowing parents to choose, as the Emir of Qatar did, is unfortunately not an
option. However, if you take the emphasis off the system itself and look instead at
intended outputs from that system educated and able school leavers with enhanced job
prospects then some parallels exist. Instead of creating an alternative syllabus or
textbooks, it is possible to strengthen alternatives that already exist Sri Lankas private
tutories, for example. Strengthening public-private links in education and working towards
public-private coherence can be achieved through teachers who work in both systems,
through engaging the business community and the private schools themselves to offer
scholarships, to work with commercial publishing houses to create affordable new books
that supplement the existing ones, and to seek sponsors for higher education and research
from industry.
2.2 Methodological Coherence
Methodological coherence involves promoting the same approaches from primary school
through to upper secondary school, and even beyond, to tertiary level.
More often than not participatory approaches are introduced and employed at primary
level because at primary level the method is clearly the message process is content.
Many primary educationalists agree that learning processes such as how to communicate,
express themselves, participate, work in groups, share, respect others, socialise, be part of
a team and a community, problem solve, complete tasks, etc. are the real aim of primary
education and along the way children also get a firm grounding in the content mastering
basic literacy and numeracy.
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However, as soon as the child enters secondary education all this is lost and secondary
school methodology is based on traditional lecture style, content-heavy lessons that are
teacher centred and all chalk and talk. There is no methodological coherence between
primary and secondary because of this swap from process to content. That it is why, in
traditional systems, it is very dangerous to ask university experts to advise on primary
education they themselves are lecturers, content specialists, used to teaching adults.They are not process-oriented teachers of small children, and as such know nothing about
the pragmatics of participatory, task based, child-centred methodology.
As well as striving for methodological cohesion in a vertical sense primary to secondary
to tertiary it is also important to consider methodological cohesion in a horizontal sense.
This means if a learner centred approach is to be adopted, then techniques such as guided
discovery should not only be found when teaching science but also when teaching
literacy or dance. Likewise self access should not be restricted to content-heavy subjects
like history or literature but should also be encouraged for maths and biology.
Finally, as well as vertical and horizontal cohesion, methodology should also beconsidered in terms of a looped cohesion. When there is coherence between content and
process, the medium mirrors the message and a positive loop is formed. What the teacher
says is reinforced by what the teacher does; the how and the what become interlinked
to strengthen learning and teaching.
If, in a teacher training college a lecturer gets up and gives a lecture on The Advantages
of Group work there is no process-content cohesion because the message is group work
but the medium is lecture. If, however, a teacher educator in a teacher training college puts
the participants in five groups, gives each group a different reading text on The
Advantages of Group work, has them read and discuss the main points, then mixes them
up by putting them into new groups where each member represents his/her former group
and has them teach each other what they have just read, then there is strong process-
content cohesion: the message is group work and the process uses group work as the
medium of delivery process and content have been looped.
2.3 Institutional coherence
Teacher training initiatives in Sri Lanka in the past have often failed because of a lack of
institutional coherence. Change is initiated, for example, at pre-service level and not at in-
service level or vice versa; the Regional English Support Centres (RESCs) are involved inmethodological change for teaching English but In-service Advisors (ISAs) are not;
teachers are selected and trained as trainers for their subject but when a new donor-funded
initiative is introduced other untrained teachers are selected to become trainers.
In many education systems in Asia which depend on foreign interventions, dependency
brings with it reactive rather than pro-active behaviour. Often, there is no master plan, no
capacity development scheme whereby master trainers or ISAs have their skill
systematically improved and utilised. Instead there is a kind of turn taking and spreading
of inputs in order to give everyone an equal chance. This results in bits and pieces that
dont add up to anything; there is no use of outputs.
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One way of strengthening institutional coherence is to have an HRD database where
teachers, trainers and administrators competencies can be recorded and updated.
Teacher education projects should be made to state, using coherent standards laid down by
the Provincial Ministry, what was achieved, in terms of job competencies. These
competencies can then be aligned with or added to fields in the database. Likewise the
competencies in the database can start driving up standards for classroom supervision and
performance appraisal. New projects coming in can then draw on the database to identify
key trainers or materials writers with the right competencies.
Another way of strengthening institutional coherence is to provide guidelines to projects
so that they coordinate the system for grouping schools and designating key schools at
district level. This involves formalising and mapping lead schools by district such as the
(World Bank funded) Lighthouse schools, (DFID funded) RESC schools, and UNICEF
supported school clusters, for greater sustainability. The same goes for disseminating past
project reports to new projects to avoid duplication and, as mentioned above, to exploit
and sustain already developed capacity, tools, and lessons learnt.
The Czech NGO PIN recently engaged in an English language improvement project for
volunteer English teachers in Trincomalee town, duplicating similar inputs by the
Trincomalee RESC and the British Council TELT project but without building on lessons
learnt. For similar reasons it would be useful if the JICA Improving School Management
to Enhance Quality of Education project, ISMEQuE read the two external evaluations
written up on the TELT project (Psyche Kennett 2005; Jill Knight 2006) before involving
English in its plans.
With the de-merger of the North East Provincial Council, coherence amongst donorfunded education projects and building on lessons learnt from previous projects is
particularly important for the Northern Provincial Council so that institutional memory in
the Northern Provincial Ministry of Education is maintained from the start.
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3. Managing change in education
3.1 Change management
Change management in education utilises a simple set of strategies, based on past
experience, that make it possible to implement and sustain reforms. The key factors ofchange management in education are
1. Applying both pressure and support
2. Working from top down and bottom up at the same time
3. Establishing trust and winning support through professional credibility
4. Accumulating a 'Critical Mass' of change agents to change institutions from within
5. Effecting behavioural change in the way people work
6. Starting small and working towards incremental change or the snowball effect
7. Implementing realistic changes
8. Allowing time to assimilate change
9. Establishing and maintaining cross-institutional links
3.2 Pressure and support
Education reform requires a balance of pressure and support - pressure to force teachers to
change, support to encourage them to change (Watson 2003). Pressure is usually
considered a bad thing and support, a good thing, but in education reform there is often a
positive role for both. The NIE and the Ministry of Education tend to maintain the status
quo (despite interventions); when change does occur, it is because pressure builds up and
leads people to act. Sometimes it is difficult to separate pressure and support; indeed thepossibility of change is increased when the two are combined.
In practical terms, clear policy and a certain element of prescriptivism stating the
changes required - can provide the necessary pressure and support. There is nothing
more stressful for a semi skilled teaching force to be told to make changes without being
told how to make them. For example, in Qatar, the introduction of the new literacy
curriculum standards for teaching Arabic were highly threatening to the majority of
teachers who didn't understand literacy teaching and didnt have the methodology to turn
the standards into real lessons. This was pressure without support. But once an
accompanying scheme of work and a series of model lesson plans were provided by the
Supreme Education Council, the Arabic language teachers felt much more supported andwere then able to transfer the new curriculum standards into resources, lesson plans and
lessons.
Likewise reflective approaches to teacher education can lack the pressure element and fail
just as prescriptive approaches can lack the support element and fail. In an AusAID
tertiary science and technology teacher training project in Vietnam, out of a group of 50
in-service college teachers who designed small scale classroom research projects, only one
teacher actually carried out the research because implementation was voluntary and
unsupervised in the trainees own institute. The research project was designed as a task to
support trainees professional development without putting them under any pressure. If,
however, the research project report had been required as part of the formal final
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assessment, all the trainees would have completed it, and would have benefited more from
having done so.
3.3 Top down and bottom up
The most effective change occurs in the system when change is pushed and supported
from senior management level down through the system and from parent/ student/teacher
level up through the system. Pressure and support is therefore applied top down and
bottom up. Traditional education systems are usually hierarchical and top-down only.
Directives are sent from management to the chalk face. But when reform is also
motivated from the grass-roots level and passes up through the system, then things really
begin to change. Ultimately, top-down/bottom-up approaches act like a pair of pincers on
the middle management who are usually the group most impervious to change. Top
managers have vision for change; chalk-face practitioners have the skills to implement
change; middle managers are the administrators and bureaucrats who sit in the middle and
wish to maintain the status quo. Pressure from the top and the bottom helps to squeezethese middle managers into action.
For example, the Provincial Ministry could introduce a new set of curriculum standards
and resources for mother tongue Tamil language classes, incorporating critical thinking
skills and literacy skills. A directive would be sent to implement the change. ZDEs, ISAs
and school principals would probably remain unconvinced. Teachers and ISAs would
receive training in how to teach the new standards for Tamil, using a more
communicative, task based, learner centred methodology. Training would be paid for by a
donor funded project. As training went on, teachers would become enthusiastic about the
new Tamil classes because they would be more interesting to deliver and they could seebetter results from the students. Students would enjoy classes more, attendance rates
would go up and a buzz of popularity would start to surround the new approach to
teaching and learning Tamil. ZDEs, ISAs and school principals would be required to
monitor the progress of the new Tamil curriculum, as directed by the Provincial Ministry,
who would require them to conduct classroom visits on a regular basis. During these visits
school principals would begin to see for themselves the change taking place in the way
students participated in class and the improved fluency and accuracy in the written work
they produced. The more involved the school principals became, the more enthusiastic
they would get about the change taking place at least in theory!
Top-down donor funded projects, such as the GTZ supported Performance Improvement
Project, tend to put the emphasis on building organisational capacity through management
- in Northern Province education terms this would translate as strengthening the capacity
of the Provincial Ministry of Education and the ZDEs, and relying on them to organise and
get messages through to school principals. On the other hand, evidence from research
suggests the value of a focus on the school, with greater involvement of a 'critical mass' of
principals and greater focus on school teams to provide support and help shift school
culture, early on in a project (e.g. Togneri & Anderson, 2003).It doesn't make sense to
send a changed individual back into an unchanged environment. The emphasis then, is on
the whole school as the bottom up unit of change, not the individual teacher, as was the
case in many donor funded teacher training projects in the past.
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Increasing the focus on the school would mean connecting directly with more school
principals, as well as working with teachers in school teams on the same cascade, with at
least two teachers trained together from each school at any one time. Pulling out more than
one teacher from a department at any one time will never be popular with school
principals, but once they become convinced of the efficiency and longer term
sustainability of mutually supporting pairs of teachers, they may be persuaded.
The top-down/bottomup approach to change means neither end of the hierarchy should
feel excluded. On the contrary, they should be persuaded on professional grounds to buy
in to change, and feel ownership for it.
3.4 Establishing trust through credibility
Persuasion is only possible if an element of trust has been established, and that trust is
built on professional credibility, flexibility, the ability to utilise best practice and lesson
learnt from previous interventions, good communications, transparency and reliability.
The drivers of change might be technical experts in a donor funded project, or the central
ministry, or commercial education providers putting pressure on the system from outside.
Their professional credibility comes from their ability to be flexible, develop reforms
along a process model which in-builds revision to the reform strategy as a matter of
course. It also comes from their ability to utilise effective custom-built solutions, at the
same time paying heed to best practices and lessons learnt from previous initiatives. To
make this happen, a taxonomy of best practices and lessons learnt needs to be recorded,
published and held within the institutional memory.
Establishing professional credibility is very difficult in a public service culture where
everyone is a generalist and everyone may be moved on to another department at a
moments notice. It is further complicated by the fact that many of the lessons learnt,
which should feed into institutional memory, are lost once the project ends. A great deal of
time is wasted reinventing the wheel, making the same mistakes, failing to build on what
went before or utilise those who were trained before.
Therefore good reporting and good communications are very much at the heart of change
management. Initiatives need to be explained and reported on a regular basis not only to
the senior management but also to the school directors and the parents. Results need to be
published and stamina and consistency are required to do this on a regular basis. As withmost educational reform, things start small and grow incrementally. Very often at the point
where stakeholders have lost interest, the initiative begins to show results. Good reporting
and PR can cover this delay, anticipate scepticism in the long wait for results and bolster
motivation and commitment until the project starts delivering the goods.
In addition, good communications and regular reporting provide stakeholders with
transparency and persuade them of reliability and these points of good governance need
to be established with pupils, parents and principals just as much as with ZDEs and the
Provincial Ministry staff.
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3.5 Winning support
3.5.1 Engendering can do mentality
There is a strong correlation between skills, confidence and implementing change. Change
requires a can do mentality. Can do mentality comes from confidence and confidence
from ability. It is only untrained, inexperienced teachers who say Were not allowedtosupplement the textbook. The Ministry wont let us. Once they know how to supplement
the textbook effectively with well designed lesson plans and materials taken from other
sources and still achieve the curriculum objectives teachers stop saying they arent
allowed to do it.
Confidence, skill and attitude to innovation influence behaviour in senior management too.
I cant do it therefore it cant be done. I dont know about it therefore it doesnt exist.
It was never done like that before therefore it cannot be done like that now. These are
common reservations that permeate government institution resistance to change.
To counter reservations and win support, it is necessary to build the confidence and skillsof the biggest detractors of change, in a protected environment. This means capacity is
developed in a non threatening way with little or no possibility of failure. One way of
doing this is to persuade senior managers (ZDEs) and supervisors (ISAs) those with a lot
to loose to take on new skills.
In Vietnam, on the English Language Teacher Training Project, the equivalent of the ISAs
plus some senior methodology lecturers from Hanoi University were all persuaded to go
back into the classroom, learn the new methodology and teach grade 6 students while the
Grade 6 teachers observed them. This initiative reversed all the roles those who normally
sat at the back and criticised now had to stand at the front and teach. Those who normally
taught were allowed to sit at the back and criticise for a change. For many of the older and
more senior supervisors and lecturers this was a high-stakes exercise there was a lot to
loose. But they were coached and supported so that they couldnt fail in the classroom in
front of their peers and juniors. In addition, their peers and juniors were trained to give
constructive, non judgemental feedback not something any of them had experienced
before. For many of them it was a seminal experience. They realised, perhaps for the first
time, how easy it is to sit at the back and demand change, how hard it is to get up to the
front and do it. They learned new respect for the practitioners at the chalk face. They also
became convinced by the methodology because they experienced, first hand, how well the
Grade 6 students responded to it. For them the experience was empowering and created for
the project a new group of quite powerful change agents. With this success came theirsupport.
3.5.2 The power of inclusion
In education there are so many stakeholders that it is quite easy to overlook some of them.
But exclusion from the change process is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes in change
management. Exclusion is threatening, inclusion empowering. In Thailand, DFIDs
Provincial In-service Secondary Education and Training (PISET) project neglected the
regional supervisors in favour of the master teachers and designated in-service teacher
trainers. This second group of practitioners became greatly empowered with new skills
and new roles and responsibilities. The regional supervisors, too proud to be re-trained
ultimately lost out as the in-service trainers and master teachers grew in stature andshowed themselves to be more proficient. Thailand has an extremely hierarchical culture
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of management, just like Sri Lanka, and there was a great deal of loss of face which
could have been avoided if the project experts had been more flexible, experienced and
had had the credibility to persuade the regional supervisors to join in.
In three educational zones in Jaffna District, on the other hand, ISAs were included as
master trainers on the USAID/UNICEF/ British Council TELT project and as a result thementoring procedures which evolved from the project are now used in some zones as the
official approach for ISAs. While participating in the training two of the ISAs were
persuaded to delegate some of their school follow-up visits to their fellow course
participants - experienced teachers and trainers - who they recognised as peers. To achieve
this delegation of duties which made the follow-up more systematic and therefore more
sustainable - it was important for the ISAs not to feel threatened or usurped but rather to
feel supported and professionally affirmed.
School principals are the other group of stakeholders who must be won over, and for many
of them in the Northern Province, there is a lot to be learnt in terms of educationalconcepts. Due to the conflict situation in the Northern Province, school directors have
become de-skilled and many function as little more than administrators. Although there
are many striking exceptions, chronic under budgeting and understaffing have made some
lose their vision for the school, lose there will to make a difference. Training in setting
new educational standards, pride of place and quality assurance would greatly empower
them and give them the confidence to stop being doorkeepers and start being leaders.
3.5.3 Anticipating stakeholders objections
One of the best ways of winning support and gaining professional credibility is for those
involved in managing change to anticipate, classify and deal with the objections that will
arise from parents, teachers, principals, supervisors, directors, curriculum and textbookwriters, examiners, the press. Classifying these objections can usually be done under the
following headings - time, money, access, ability, school culture, purpose and politics.
Counteracting stakeholder objections and at the same time demonstrating flexibility and a
willingness to deal with real problems has a powerfully winning effect. Psychologically,
many stakeholders are simply flattered that you have taken the time to anticipate their
problems and look for appropriate solutions. They are impressed by the fact that your
experience has put you on their wavelength.
A shortlist ofreal objections will always remain and these will need time and effort,
negotiation, compromise and thinking out of the box to resolve. But the majority of
objections will stem from the cant do mentality; a feeling of being threatened or
excluded. As stated above, the way forward is to build stakeholder confidence, empower
them with new skills, inform them and keep them informed, on board and very much
included as a beneficiary of change.
3.6 Critical mass
There is little point returning a changed individual to an unchanged environment. It is
important to accumulate a critical mass of change agents to change institutions from
within. What number constitutes this critical mass is determined by the situation and themagnitude of the reform. But at a certain point when enough changed individuals are in
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place, momentum begins to gather new messages and ways of working begin to become
the norm. Whereas in the past the changed individual was in the minority and could be put
under pressure not to rock the boat, now the changed individuals are in the majority and
can put the unchanged individuals under pressure to join them. A powerful group in this
regard are the students themselves. They constitute the ultimate bottom up force for
change. One good teacher can raise the expectations of the 250 plus students s/he teachesjust by showing them what good teaching and learning can be. No wonder the rest of the
department fear changed individuals they create new expectations from the clients
the students and this puts them under pressure to change too. Another powerful group, as
mentioned in 7.5.2 above, are the school principals.
A critical mass of school principals can put pressure for change on the system both
upwards to the ZDEs and downwards to the teachers, students and pupils.
The accumulation of this 'critical mass' of change agents is slow because like drops of rain,
change agents take time to gather in different places, spread, join up, form a pool. Once
however a certain momentum is created, things begin to move more quickly. It becomeseasier to convince others so the size of the movement and speed at which it moves is
incremental. It starts to have a snowball effect. This is the point education reform projects
should aim for. They need to plan for, and persuade stakeholders to buy into, a slow start-
up time, usually for a pilot phase. They need to predict what numbers and amongst which
stakeholder groups change agents will join up to create the critical mass. They then need
to have the resources in place to accommodate an expansion phase. They also need to
anticipate unexpected impact and spread that might, for example, be horizontal (i.e. across
the curriculum) when vertical spread (i.e. from lower to upper secondary) was originally
envisaged and planned for.
Likewise the Chief Secretarys Office and the Provincial Ministry of Education need toexamine project proposals with a view to change management, change agents and the
accumulation of a critical mass. If the right elements for this evolutionary process are not
sufficiently in-built in the project design, or the individual project cannot be slotted as a
discrete component into a more integrated master plan that takes the issues of change
management into account, then it can be said that the proposed project is not sustainable.
3.7 Behavioural change
It is also useful to remember that, when implementing a capacity development initiative
which seeks to effect a behavioural change in the way teachers work, both time andintensity are needed. 120 hours full time, participatory, task based study is a good unit of
change in this regard. Any less time spent, or the same amount of time spent distributed
over the period of an academic school year, for example, will not produce the same
results. Sri Lanka is famous for doing in-service training at the weekends 30 week,
week-end courses. The same materials in a 120 hour course can be covered at weekends in
this way, but the accruing skills, the hot- house or crucible effect of full time study is
dissipated during the week and a great deal of catching up where we left off last week
undermines the impact of such courses. As the weekends go on, motivation decreases,
drop out rates increase and the outcome is a watered down version of what might have
been. (It is for the same arguments that the PIP supported Skills Through English for
Public Servants STEPS programme is a four week, full time, intensive, residential
course.)
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In short, weekend courses work on an administrative level - ensuring no disruption to the
school, no need for substitute teachers but weekend classes are not, ultimately, cost
effective, because they dont bring about the desired behavioural change. However, it
takes some confidence on the side of the school principal to allow a teacher to be absent
for four weeks in the hope that they will return to do a better job, than it does to keep themwhere they are, underperforming for the rest of the year. It also takes commitment. As
these are the very skills needed in school principals, their willingness to release staff for
intensive four week in-service training is a good indicator of school principal capacity.
3.8 A realistic shift
When working for behavioural change, it is important to set realistic objectives, and not to
be over ambitious or inflate the real change that occurs. For example, to develop capacity
in learner centred teaching, in order to make students more independent learners
initiative-takers with better critical thinking skills - teachers have to move away fromlecture-based, teacher centred lessons towards more task-based, learner-centred lessons.
At the same time, the content of lessons needs to be less that of rote learning and copying
models, motivated by punishment or reward (behaviourism) and more critical thinking
based: observing and discovering, testing hypotheses, generalising and applying own rules
(cognitive approach). It is unrealistic to expect a methodological shift from teacher centred
to learner centred and at the same time from behaviourist to cognitive approaches:
Teacher centred
Behaviourism
x x x
x x
x
Cognitiveapproach
x
x x
xxx
Learner centredFigure one: optimum behavioural shift in the way teachers conduct classes
A more realistic target would be to expect the majority of teachers to have shifted one
quadrant into the next dimension, either, from more teacher-centred to more learner
centred-teaching, but still behaviourist, copying models:
Teacher centred
Behaviourism
x x x
x x
x
Cognitive
xxx
x x
x
Learner centredFigure two: realistic behavioural shift in the way teachers conduct classes (a)
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or, from more behaviourist teaching to using more cognitive approaches, but still rather
teacher centred:
Teacher centred
Behaviourism x x x
x xx
X x xx x
Cognitive
Learner centredFigure three: realistic behavioural shift in the way teachers conduct classes (b)
3.9 Assimilating change
Personal (and indeed national) development takes much longer than the donors or thegovernments time line allows. This simple factor is continually undermined by hot-
house, battery hatched projects and the need for verifiable impact after one or two years.
One of the main lessons to be learnt is the three-day workshop that appeals to bankers and
government officials alike, is perhaps the biggest waste of time in the whole field of
education and development. As we have seen, the unit of change of behavioural change
is around 120 hours: four weeks, done intensively. The time to assimilate and own the
skills accrued on such a course, however, may take much longer. To assimilate is to go
beyond the steps, the recipes, the techniques, the reflection: it means to master the
repertoire, to adapt it, to make its generative potential generate whats required for
specific, new situations. As in the acquisition of all new skills, the process of assimilation
includes several stages, but once learnt, occupies less and less conscious brain space, andbecomes more automatic, like learning to ride a bicycle or word-process a document.
The stages of accruing skills and experience: The Assimilation Concertina
awareness raising (which can include challenge, even hostility to the new model)
over acceptance (where all behaviour is interpreted through the same model)
over use (other more suitable solutions may be disregarded)
time to let things settle (a filtering process; things become less black and white)
harmonisation (of new skills with old skills and whereby models are personalised)
adaptation (experimentation begins; parts of one model mix with parts of another) assimilation (whereby the model or skill or information becomes second nature)
optimum use (concertinaed in the brain, but representing a wealth of experience).
The biggest obstacle to validating this theory is that education projects are not allowed this
filtering time in their budgets. Impact studies are rarely carried out or, if they are, they are
expected to show results too soon. Indeed, any initiative that might take longer than the
political life of a new policy or a new minister of education, is not considered as a viable
activity. Educational change involving a) behavioural change in teachers, b) the
assimilation concertina and c) on-going professional development, requires both time and
money. Long term, on-going monitoring and support visits should be factored in to any
plans for sustainable change.
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3.10 Establishing cross-institutional links
Finally, change management must work across traditional institutional links. Change may
not happen in straight horizontal or vertical lines as discussed in 3.6 above.
Parallel lines might include regulation and reform of the private pre-schools and tutories
through local government, not the Provincial Ministry of Education. Diagonal lines might
link central and provincial education and training institutes that deal with young adults
for example the Management Development Training Department (MDTD) to the
Vocational Training College, Trincomalee.
(See also section 2.1, last paragraph, which gives more examples of unconventional links,
such as public-private partnerships, to achieve institutional coherence.)
This then brings up the question of de centralising change. Usually one of the factors of
change management is de centralisation. But a discussion of the devolved and concurrent
duties of the Central and Provincial Ministries of Education requires a strategy paper all of
its own! However, it is important to point out that central ministries and institutions ofeducation will behave like the stakeholders described in 3.5.2 above. If excluded from the
change initiative, they will become threatened and obstructive, if included, they will
become empowered and supportive.
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4. Exams
4.1 Exams as a driving force for educational change
The most powerful driver for educational change is changing the exams and the
examination system. The exam is the tail that wags the dog. This is the case becauseexams are high stakes: they validate the educational culture, the system, the teachers, the
learners and their futures. The sooner educational reformists recognise this fact, the sooner
they will be able to make sustainable changes to the way subjects are taught and learnt.
Take, for example, the introduction of testing mental arithmetic in Britain. Superseded by
calculators, children could no longer do sums in their own heads. Mental arithmetic testing
at primary level became a new initiative to test an old skill that had somehow fallen out of
the curriculum. Mental arithmetic tests were included in the national primary school
exams. Everyone knew that without the pressure of the exam, it would not have been
taught. In addition, because it was mental arithmetic, it could not be tested by reading
and writing. It had to be tested by an oral exam (presented as an audio recording or read
aloud by the teacher) with answers written down by the pupils. Both the content and the
way of examining were new, but had a powerful wash-back effect on the classroom.
Mental arithmetic is now systematically taught in all UK primary schools.
If, instead of mental arithmetic skills, a learner-centred, task based methodology were
required, the examination system could also be utilised to drive that change. Informal
assessment could be introduced to partially take the place of traditional exams. Students
could be assessed by portfolio on their coursework or by averaging their continuous
assessment grades for written work throughout the school year. The exam would
underwrite the principles of the task-based, learner centred methodology.
Similarly, if children are required to be critical-thinking problem-solvers, then school
exams must include the testing of these skills. If a more articulate work force is required,
school leavers who can produce and express ideas rather than simply recognise
information, then the exclusive use of multiple choice exams must stop. If teacher training
involves practical skills then an observed and assessed practicum must become an
integral part of the final assessment that qualifies them as teachers.
In short, if the exam reflects what is being taught not just in content but also in process
then there is coherence between subject and exam, between the methodology of teaching
and the methodology of testing. If there is innovation in the exam there will be innovationin the subject. It is up to educational reformers to take a firm hold of the tail that wags the
dog.
4.2 Exam alternatives
Changing the exams and the examination system often means engaging with university
experts. In traditional education systems like Sri Lankas, most exams lead to a
university entrance exam. This is an unfortunate fact - unfortunate because the university
experts who write the exam are often the most conservative educationalists in the
system. They are the gate keepers, wielding power over an ever-growing population ofwould-be university goers, guarding the too-few university places that do exist against the
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majority. It is not from this camp that an innovative exam is likely to be provided! Indeed,
it is to their advantage to keep the exam traditional and elitist even though it has the
potential to drive enormous change back down through the system.
However, based on the premise that 98% of students dont qualify for university in Sri
Lanka in the first place, one solution is to take the impetus away from university entranceexams and to begin to offer other kinds of exams that lead to other kinds of qualifications
and confer other kinds of status.
For example, it may be possible for a Provincial Council to enter a contract with an
international examining body like the University of Cambridge Local Examinations
Syndicate (UCLES) to offer alternative O and A levels or internationally recognised
English certification at elementary level (Key English Test or KET), pre intermediate level
(Preliminary English Test or PET) and intermediate level (First Certificate English).
Donor funding could be used to pay for two or three such exam places per school or
school district and then establish a scholarship competition within the school which in
turn drives reform in the way things are taught.
Another solution is to offer alternative, scientifically validated, innovative exams,
developed by the Provincial Ministry itself, again, with technical assistance funded by
project donors, for non examined subjects.
The non-examined subject is low stakes and non threatening students do not have a lot
to win or lose by taking it; all the more reason for examining the non-examined subjects in
an innovative way. An innovative exam can have a positive wash-back on the subject it is
examining and thereafter on other subjects in the curriculum that start to follow suit. The
aim is to build a reputation around that exam so that it really qualifies school leavers in a
particular area. As time goes on, employers learn the value of that qualification and startasking for it. Demand from employers rather than from universities re-orientates parents,
students and through them teachers and school directors.
As English is a non-examined subject there is little standardisation in the end-of-year
exams. In many districts, exams are bought in from private institutions for example in
Trincomalee District exams are bought from a private school in Negombo, because it is
cheaper than having the district produce its own exam. On close inspection, the Negombo
exams leave much to be desired.
Instead, English teachers and ISAs could be encouraged to develop skills in test
specification, item writing, and standardisation of marking. They should also learn how topilot and analyse sample data on test item validity and reliability. ZDEs could be
persuaded to balance cost effectiveness with standards and professional effectiveness.
Expertise could be utilised from the British Council, possibly utilising their Exams Unit
and the English Language Services Manager's work to provide training, awareness-raising
about testing, the benefits of positive wash back, and the development of a test item bank.
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5. Curriculum standards
5.1 Textbook as curriculum
When governments mistrust the ability of their teaching workforce, they prescribe, to the
letter, what must be taught on which day. As late as the 1970s, France was a nationfamous for the fact that every class at the same grade level in every school across the
nation was on the same page on the same day. This extreme model is prescriptive to the
point of indoctrination not for a moment does it consider the differences in individual
needs of students, communities, and regions. It treats teachers, classrooms, textbooks and
students as parts of a machine. Cambodia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka are not as extreme as
1970s France, but to a lesser or greater extent these countries use the prescribed textbook
for each subject at each grade as if it were the curriculum. There is pressure to cover the
textbook to do each page, and the assumption is, that by studying each page in the
book, students will pass the exam.
If teachers maintain the spirit of what is being taught in the textbook but do it in their own
way they are generally not appreciated for their efforts not by their department nor their
school director, nor by their students nor the parents of their students In most South and
South East Asian school systems it is not good to be seen to be different. There is a great
deal of pressure, in Vietnam, for example, for student teachers not to excel, and not to
experiment with new-fangled methodology or materials. Within a short period of getting a
permanent appointment, new teachers are brow-beaten by the rest of the department to
sink to the same level of mediocrity, in order not to raise student expectations as to what
could really be achieved in a 45 minute lesson, and most importantly, not to put other
teachers under pressure to do more preparation. What better way to enforce the idea of
uniformity than by making uniformity equal minimal effort? It is easy then to insist thatthe textbookis the curriculum and that the duty of the teacher is to cover the book.
5.2 Content and performance standards
If however the government has faith in the ability and sincerity of teachers, understands
the need to cater for the different needs of different groups of learners, and is secure
enough to tolerate and encourage diversity, then the opposite of the old French system can
be introduced: curriculum standards. The education authority produces a list of
curriculum standards, divided in to grades and subjects. The list is made up of content
standards and performance standards. Content standards stipulate what topics,information, skills and knowledge need to be taught. Performance standards stipulate what
levels need to be achieved to what level of mastery. These curriculum standards operate
like a detailed syllabus, but they do not say when or how to teach the items listed.
It is up to the school, school department, or head of department, to take the curriculum
standards and turn them into a scheme of work, timetable, series of lesson plans. In many
cases it is also up to the department to match textbooks and resources to the standards.
Some schools might find a single textbook to match the standards very closely; others
might draw on a range of published and in-house materials as exponents of the standards.
In Thailand, the Ministry of Education approves four or five books per subject per gradewhich closely fit the curriculum standards. It is then up to the individual schools to specify
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which books they will use. If the books work in a sequence, building, for example, skills
over three school grades, then the school must commit to using those books for at least one
complete cycle.
Education ministries vary from country to country as to how much control they exert in
this area. In Qatar, the Supreme Education Council only exerts control insofar as thecurriculum standards must be adopted. Then it is entirely up to individual schools to use
their own expertise and resources to choose which textbooks and supplementary materials
they will use. Each school is given a student per capita grant for the purchasing of
textbooks and resources. It is up to each school how they utilise this grant.
Crucially, in this approach, the same standards which are decided on for curriculum and
syllabus are used for the examinations as well. One document is used for all. This makes
the whole system of teaching, learning, and evaluation both coherent and transparent.
Transparent, because only those items which have been described core standards are
tested. In this way, teachers and students can work towards achievable, objective goals.
They can also avoid becoming victims of rote learning and the memorisation of wholepages from the textbook: the textbook is no longer the curriculum. It is no longer
important to know what happened on page 57. Students begin to have the opportunity to
learn life skills, not just become good at schooling and school books.
Most countries with education systems which are rated highly by UNICEF have
curriculum standards for content and performance. These are usually published documents
and can be made available to the Northern Provincial Council. In many cases they can also
be accessed though the internet. In this way, a great deal of time and effort can be saved.
Curriculum standards for Sri Lanka do not have to be developed from scratch. Moreover,
by studying and copying the education standards of other countries Sri Lanka can alignitself with international standards, and by so doing raise its own standards and
expectations about what teachers and students should be striving to achieve.
One place to start is to use another countrys curriculum standards, to analyse how a
universal subject, like Maths or Science, is being taught in the Northern Province. The
curriculum standards could be used in this way to do a needs analysis, to measure the
shortfall of what is not being taught. Then, supplementary curriculum standards, schemes
of work, lesson plans and materials could be developed and sourced, to fill in the gaps and
bring those studying the subject more in line with what is internationally accepted.
5.3 Competency based standards
One of the most important factors in the curriculum standards approach, is that each
standard is written as a competency, as a can do statement. For example,
from the Qatar English as a second language curriculum standards, Grade 2:
Students can develop reading strategies and actively participate in reading with the teacher to:
apply phonic strategies to decoding of simple, regular words in context;
identify and read sight words using expanding vocabulary knowledge, word/symbolcorrespondence, context and phonic knowledge;
distinguish lines of print from sentences;
read simple sentences aloud with acceptable pronunciation and stress relevant to meaning; identify and understand basic sentence punctuation: capital letters, full stops and question marks.
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and from the Maths Grade 7 curriculum standards:
Most students can
identify alternate, supplementary and corresponding angles
describe angle properties related to diagonals of squares, rectangles, parallelograms and rhombuses use these and other properties to find the values of unknown angles in geometric figures use a ruler and
compasses to construct angle bisectors and perpendicular bisectors and, together with a protractor, toconstruct simple geometric figures from given data.
Students who progress further can calculate interior and exterior angles of polygons solve problems using angle and symmetry properties of polygons and angle properties of parallel and
intersecting lines construct 2-D shapes from given information, including scale drawings.
Students who make slower progress can recognise vertically opposite angles, angles on a straight line and around a point work out the sum of the angles of a triangle and the relationship between the exterior angle of a triangle
and its interior opposite angles use these and other properties to find the values of angles in geometric figures use a ruler and protractor to construct triangles, given two sides and the included angle, or two angles
and the included side.
Curriculum standards expressed as competencies force teachers, parents, learners,
examiners, school inspectors, education officials and ultimately politicians, to start
thinking in terms of building up individual components of learning to form a well rounded
education, the skills base of the next generation, achievable outputs and goals, school
leavers with the right competencies to join the work force and a can do mentality for
students, teachers and teacher trainers.
5.4 Competency based assessment
Once the required competencies are specified, by subject and grade, they not only
formulate the objectives of each lesson or block of work, they also automatically form the
assessment criteria for progress and achievement tests. In terms of progress assessment,
the teacher keeps a record of how well each student is doing on each competency. For
example, this assessment tool can be used for evaluating student progress in Tamil literacy
Tamil Language Grade 7 Competencies for on-going assessment Class 7G
Students can Ravi Theva Sameem Shanti Pushpa Dasa
summarise key messages from straightforward texts.
write descriptions of people.
understand spoken text and take relevant notes.
express certainty and possibility in future plans.
construct a polite written invitation.
write a letter giving advice.
express a point of view, likes and dislikes in writing.
write a short discursive text (advantages, disadvantages.
write well ordered multi step instructions.
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Key
The marks in the form are built up over one or two terms. Each 'can do' statement would be achieved after
one or several units of work, so the marks are modified by the teacher as the lessons go on. A mark given
by the teacher as an empty circle () means the sub skill is not yet evident in the student being assessed.
The teacher then draws a diagonal line through it () once the student starts to show evidence of using thesub skill. When the student develops the sub skill the teacher crosses the diagonal line in the circle () and
once the student masters the sub skill and uses it appropriately in a consistent manner, the teacher then
colours in the circle (). Different sub skills are built up through different units of work until all the boxes
are filled.
Likewise, passing a final exam can be related to achieving competencies instead of
meaningless grades or marks. Results are expressed in terms of a list of competencies
mastered, developed, attempted, not achieved, for example.
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6. Textbooks
6.1 Sri Lankan textbook options
All this is a far cry from the World Bank funded multi-option book system through the
NIE. A multi option system should by definition, allow for a range of textbooks and giveeducation zones the right to choose. The World Banks provision of multi options for
English, for example, provides, in fact, just two titles, both written by the same pool of
authors, coming from the same background and approach. Unfortunately the result is not
aligned to current international English language teaching standards. The English
textbooks for grade 7, for example, are outdated and obscure in vocabulary, topics and
attitude, the language curriculum is low frequency and idiosyncratic, and there is a serious
absence of discrete items in terms of language building bricks. These books are
incredibly difficult to teach and learn from. They do not help students become
independent, fluent, initiative-taking users of English. They dont even help students
master the basics. Education advisers, supervisors, directors, trainers and teachers need to
become much more critical of short comings in textbooks and if they cannot hope for
better outputs from the textbook authors, they must start building up their own resources.
6.2 Confidence in alternative resources
Fortunately, guidelines for using textbooks in the Sri Lankan school system have always
been quite flexible and this is an advantage the Northern Province can capitalise on. There
are ways of working around the textbook problem. First is to build up the confidence and
skills of teachers, school directors, ISAs, ZDEs and Provincial Ministry of Education so
that they are not afraid of doing something different for the Northern Province. Then thereis the need to examine just how closely they must use the NIE prescribed textbooks and to
what extent these books can be supplemented. They will find that, in fact, there is quite
some room for manoeuvre.
Some tools that the Northern Provincial Ministry of Education can develop on a limited
donor budget - in addition to the introduction of competency based content and
performance curriculum standards, as described in section 4 above include the
development of:
confidence building measures for school officials, teachers, parents and students to
promote competencies, curriculum standards and demote textbooks;
schemes of work which select the best and leave the rest, in terms of textbook pages;
collections of skeleton lesson plans which help teachers break unwieldy textbook
sections into manageable lessons;
high frequency vocabulary lists/glossaries for Tamil, Sinhala and English;
in-house supplementary resource collections which can be shared within departments;
book boxes, mobile resource collections, mini libraries and alternative, parallel
textbooks from other countries.
As the Northern Provincial Council has been granted by GTZ the printing rights for the
Skills Through English for Public Servants (STEPS) 120 hour course, they could adapt it
and print it for university entrance or tertiary studies English language courses and give it
to the Northern universities to teach. Printing costs and some prior teacher training forthose who would deliver it could be funded by a donor project.
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7. Capacity building
Sometimes those who control curriculum, textbooks, exams, teacher training and school
administration do a disservice to the student population intentionally the political act of
keeping the population undereducated so that they do not question authority, demand
better job opportunities or start thinking for themselves. Under Margaret Thatcher, theBritish Government made modern history and media studies no longer compulsory at O
Level the very subjects that might make young people question politics, propaganda and
the media.
But more often than not, inadequate curriculum, textbook, exams, teachers and school
administrators are the result of a simple lack of technical expertise. Education is an
evolving and technically diverse field. Many people in senior positions of educational
management have received an education themselves, which they rely on to guide policy.
This may be subliminal, but the underlying principal is often, We will do it this way
because thats the way we did it when I was at school Perhaps more than in other
technical fields, educational policy is based on general or personal experience and not
enough credence is given to technical expertise. Just because youve experience d
something doesnt mean youre an expert on it. Just because youve learnt something
doesnt mean you can teach it. Just because the system has worked for privileged
politicians in privileged environments doesnt mean it is a good model to roll out to the
rest of the country.
This is coupled with the fact that education and education reform also has the potential to
be highly politicised. Votes are very much wrapped up with voting parents who need to be
convinced that their children will benefit from the national education on offer. English
medium education in Sri Lanka is politicised in this way. Policy plays on the fact thatparents strongly believe that English enhances the employment potential of their children.
But instead of strengthening the subject English in the curriculum and making it an
examined subject, English medium education for Maths and Science is being paraded as
the answer. It is being promoted, primarily, by those who had an English medium
education themselves, probably in Colombo or Kandy or Jaffna. But there are several
fundamental mistakes in promoting English medium teaching of Maths and Science in Sri
Lanka.
1. Research shows that A Level students consistently score higher marks when they
do Maths and Science in their mother tongue, not English. This means, if Sri Lanka
pursues its English medium for Maths and Science goal, lip-service will be paid tostrengthening English, while Maths and Science standards will drop.
2. Sri Lanka simply does not have the capacity to teach Maths and Science at A
Level in English Maths and Science teachers around the Island are not
sufficiently bi-lingual to use English naturally and fluently in class. The result: in
their effort to use English and their fear of being inaccurate, Maths and Science
teachers will rely more and more on reading out notes aloud or writing notes on the
board and having students copy. This means, guided discovery, task based
learning, group work discussion and the main aspects of a participatory, learner
centred, critical thinking approach will go out the window because the teacher and
the students will not be able to interact sufficiently in the second language.
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3. Successive governments have stipulated 6-week to 6-month English language
classes for Maths and Science teachers to enable them to teach their subject in
English. But apart from the problem of finding sufficient numbers of English
trainers to teach these teachers, the whole premise that teachers will learn enough
English to deliver A level Science or Maths in English in 6 weeks or even 6
months, is nave to say the least.
4. Sri Lankas English skills base has been systematically eroded since at least the
1960s. Such erosion cannot be put to rights, and voters cannot be satisfied, within a
presidential term. If it has taken nearly half a century to de-skill, it will take nearly
half a century and a substantial budget to bring enough teachers back up to the bi-
lingual level required for English medium teaching. There remains no long term
commitment to second language policy or implementation and little understanding
of how long it will take, realistically, to achieve results or how much it will cost.
Therefore, capacity building for educationalists has to be considered as a long term
strategy. It is also probably worth noting that technically, there is no quick fix. An examwriter or textbook writer should not be in that position without having been a teacher in
the first place. Otherwise they will not incorporate practical classroom management and
methodology in what they write. Likewise an ISA should be promoted up through the
teaching ranks and all ISAs, teacher trainers in PRESET and INSET and materials
designers should be required to go back and teach school for at least a month a year like
pilots who have to keep up their flying hours.
7.1 Generative approaches
More important than getting teachers to teach Maths and Science in English is to get
teacher trainers to adopt a generative approach to teacher education and training. Much of
teacher training in Sri Lanka focuses on basic upgrading in subject knowledge and the
teaching of methodology amounts to little more than getting teachers to repeat with their
students the same lesson they were given for their own improvement. They receive and
repeat, receive and repeat. Their copying is only good for one lesson - it is non generative.
This approach to teacher training compensates for a school system that has failed them,
but it will not help them to become competent practitioners. In addition it forms part of a
negative downward cycle: they in turn will produce the next generation of dysfunctional
teachers.
Teacher training should take teachers beyond the conservative and rather limited
apprenticeship model of simply learning how to copy. Teacher training should provide
teachers with an eclectic but practical methodology a set of lesson types, techniques,
classroom management skills and evaluation tools that can be used with any class in any
situation. Teachers can then apply these tools to syllabus, textbook, or resource, and
deliver a lesson without ever having seen it demonstrated before. This is the generative
approach to teacher training.
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7.2 Teachers toolkits: an eclectic repertoire of techniques
An eclectic approach collects new skills without eroding old skills. An eclectic repertoire
of techniques provides for a range of techniques that teachers can draw on in order to cater
for the different learning styles of their students aural-oral, visual, reading-writing and
kinaesthetic. It also helps them combine a range of approaches to teaching and learning traditional, behaviourist, cognitive, humanistic, participatory and autonomous.
Too much of what is learnt in teacher training college is exclusive or one-way. Teachers
are presented with a limited view and a sense of things being black and white: this is the
right way and that is the wrong way; modern is in, traditional is out. But it is very
important for all educational reform to guard against simplistic policy such as this and the
consequent pendulum swings it brings about. Time and again, educational reform has
thrown the baby out with the bath water. For example, in the late 1980s the NIE, under
the advice of British Government consultants, decided to embrace the Communicative
Approach to teaching English - an international innovation that was fundamentally re-
thinking the way English was being taught and learnt at that time. Unfortunately out wentthe baby with the bathwater: communication, fluency skills and speaking for
communication were in; grammar, accuracy and writing skills were out. To this day,
there is no proper teaching of English grammar, accuracy or writing skills in the school
curriculum. And meanwhile the rest of the world has moved on. Grammar is back in.