You never know who you are talking to …

“You never know who you are talking to” is an expression I have used many times in my personal life as well as business, whether you are in a pub, a shop, a train …….. or an airport. And to add to this, that’s why you should always give ‘em a business card!
Now been back from our Kathmandu trip for about 10 hours after a very lucky lifting of the airspace closure which coincided with our scheduled flight home. As usual couldn’t sleep even after getting home at 1am so did the usual and sifted through the mountain of post, to find a nice surprise from someone we last spoke to at Kathmandu/Doha airports exactly one year ago during our flight home after our daughter’s wedding. Marion Macpherson and Aileen Taylor were returning from a working trip to Nepal in which they had spent time teaching dermatology to local medics in Pokhara. We were both interested in each other’s work and approaches and we have to give them both credit for sowing a small seed in our minds which this year grew into a very large plant! It was through their trip that we realised how good it would be to take UK teachers/teaching experts to Nepal NOT to teach children, but to teach teachers, just as they were teaching medics as opposed to practicing medicine on patients themselves. Sounds blindingly obvious, but so was the invention of the light bulb and this led to our Teacher Development programme earlier this month.
So, back to the post, and we found two letters and two cheques from Marion/Aileen and their friend Dorothy in which they had raised some money for us which equates to the purchase of about 2000 exercise books or 100 textbooks or 50 school bags. Not only that, but that today they are flying back to Nepal to do more teaching work at Green pastures in Pokhara and would have wanted to meet up with us and visit our schools.
Anyway, good luck ladies, have a great trip, enjoy your “pensioners trek” and we know that your work at Green Pastures is a wonderful support for Nepal overall. Hope to meet up on your return.

Tutors rise to the challenge, will YOU?

The adventure begins for our three newly appointed Nepali Tutors, three young people with potential who deserve a chance to rise above the daily teaching of children in their respective schools. Babita (pictured) and Bashu are from Bal Bigyan school in Patan. Krishna is from Bal Kalyan school in Balaju. All are keen to learn, to improve, to develop what they do in the classroom.
Having received the full training from our UK teachers a couple of weeks ago they were issued with the challenge of repeating the workshop over a day from a dozen or so teachers from their respective schools who don't speak English. Saturday, they rose to that challenge and spent a day on child centred learning in a classroom at Bal Bigyan school. Their enthusiasm and courage in giving it a go were most humbling and if we could find another hundred or so like them we could transform teaching styles in the Kathmandu valley. Now there's a thought, anybody got the funding, because we CAN do it!!!!

Need a bit more humility ourselves

An article in this morning's Kathmandu Post has prompted a response from the NSA Chairman to remind the Nepal government that they should make no apology for asking aid agencies to seek guidance on delivering aid and not to work direct with local communities.We agree, and it supports and strengthens the way we have and will always work, despite the frustrations.

Dear Sir,
Your article outlining the government’s stance towards aid agencies and donors being requested to “respect the official channels” and to avoid working directly with local communities is a timely reminder at all levels that we must work together and in a coordinated way for maximum effect.

However we must seriously question why such a meeting was even necessary with the likes of DFID from my own country (UK) when we had always been led to believe that DFID’s business plan was developed in conjunction with Nepal’s government focusing on sector priorities! Surely the focus of such a meeting should have been on the proliferation of mid to small level agencies such as ourselves who can be uncontrolled and uncoordinated to an extent that inputs and achievements are diluted and unevaluated.

For three years we at Nepal Schools Aid have provided educational materials and teachers for 5 community schools in Kathmandu with probably no need for government guidance, but this year for the first time we were in a position to offer teacher training which DOES require sanction and immediately sought Education Ministry guidance and advice. We have found them to be reasonable people, helpful, and encouraging towards us. But why, oh why, does it all have to take so long to process needs, take decisions, create registrations and so on which can be a serious barrier to the enthusiasm of respectful volunteers.

Finally, in ALL cases whatever the donor/agency level Nepal’s government should not have to make “Humble suggestion: First deal with central government before reaching out to people”. We, the agencies, should have a bit more respect and common sense to be humble ourselves!

 

Yes Minister .... that will do nicely!

Who would have thought that when we began three years ago that today, Nepal's Ministry of Education would want to talk about a deal with us to be a special scheme for them in developing teaching skills. In fact the deal is wider than this in that they want to work with us on developing the "software aspects" of quality education in a number of schools which can be properly evaluated.
So, we drove up to this large white building which is the Ministry where we met with Dr Lava Deo Awasthi, Joint Secretary, Planning Division; Dr Lekha Nath Poudel, Under Secretary; Mukunda Mani Khanal, Section Head, Foreign Aid Division.   It's the closest we've ever felt to being in the presence of the British Raj!
The meeting began with the classic exchange of who does what in our respective organisations, the vision and strategy of NSA and specifically our capability programme. Without writing up the full minutes of the meeting the key points made by the Ministry were as follows:
1. "We want to find a mechanism to institutionalise your valued work, it's a treasure to us"
2. "We should work together on selecting schools to be in your programme so they can be the centre of our attention. We need a rationale which specifies which schools, where, why etc so we can make the case for your approach even stronger"
3. "You could help us to understand the greater needs if you are prepared to work outside the Kathmandu Valley in areas such as Humla, Karnali, Tarai so we include the extremely poor areas in the experiment"

The meeting concluded with four specific action points:
1. The Ministry will create a draft Memorandum of Understanding of how we will work together and in which areas.
2. The Ministry and ECCA will investigate any administrative hurdles we may have to negotiate especially registration with the Nepal Social Council.
3. The Ministry with ECCA input will specify needs for next year's training syllabus
4. The Ministry will investigate the teacher staffing needs of our current five schools to see if we can be relieved of funding extra teachers, thereby releasing funds for more effective use elsewhere.

Now, THIS is the type of post meeting action list I like, one where I have no actions personally!
Off to celebrate.

 

 

Feedback to the future

Friday afternoon saw teachers and Heads from our five schools meeting to discuss the recent training programmes and our plans for the coming year.
We had collated the feedback forms completed at the end of each course, all generally positive about content, relevance, delivery methods and pace. This helped us to focus a discussion on future programmes although we did have a feeling of " not knowing what they don't know about". However the main requests about future training were as follows:
Teacher training should keep it's focus on techniques but to also consider wrapping the techniques around the specific subjects of maths, science, literacy, life/social skills. Being helped with ideas about creating teaching materials would also be useful. Finally in a different area there were some requests for training at a secondary level since some of our schools are lower/secondary year 8/10.
The management training requests are more confused, partly because the Heads have also to give around 50% of their time to teaching as well as managing the school. Specifically they mentioned training in motivation, vision, leadership, developing younger teachers, managing older teachers (who have in many cases little or no interest in changing or learning and are in a union/government protected job).
This feedback is a reasonable start but the essential ingredient is the views or blessing of the Nepal Ministry of Education. We have a meeting with them today.

"School Sector Reform Plan a dismal failure"

A report in yesterday's Kathmandu Post editorial column entitled "Back to school"  has strongly criticised the School Sector Reform Plan. Regular readers of this blog will know that we have become very familiar with the SSRP since it was first published in January and in fact based a lot of our recent training programmes on it's content.
The editorial has highlighted several problems specifically:
1. A pilot programme in three districts has been an unmitigated disaster
2. No statute has been passed to turn the SSRP into a formalised government project with all the necessary powers
3. No educationalists or academics were involved in it's creation

We can add to the evidence.
First when introducing the teacher development programme for Heads, teachers and guests, NOT ONE person out of around 75 present had even heard of the SSRP, despite the fact that it puts low standard schools and teachers at risk of closure and removal.
Second, the SSRP itself is quite far reaching for Nepal, but it focuses exclusively on what we have termed the HARDWARE of schools such as buildings, amenities, class size, school management processes, standards and measures. What is missing is an attempt to define reforms in school SOFTWARE, in particular the curriculum, school values & ethics, teaching practices, assessment strategies. In fact it is only when the hardware and software are combined that one can get anywhere near a definition of quality education.  THIS is what needs reform in Nepal.
Is anybody out there listening?

A "cunning plan" takes shape

For some time now we have begun to believe that part of our strategy involving the payment of teacher salaries is wrong. Certainly this helps a specific school, but only one. Pay the salaries of four teachers and that helps four schools.

But instead, imagine we pay the salaries of say, only two "tutors", skilled Nepali teachers who can absorb the training given by teachers from the UK and then repeat the training for more and more teachers in any number of schools.
Our immediate need then is to find a few young Nepali teachers who are keen to learn, flexible, will rise to the challenge and can speak reasonable English. So, initially we have selected Krishna from Bal Kalyan school and Bashu and Babita from Bal Bigyan school to take part in a small experiment. In this experiment we have asked them to prepare a ONE day workshop based on the recent two days training they have been given in Child Centred Techniques and to deliver it to 9 delegates on April 17th. We will observe, assess, then judge waht to do next.
All three have accepted the challenge!

Rotary Club success

Sunday morning we had an appointment with the Rajadhani Rotary Club in Kathmandu, at the Annapurna Hotel. Arranged by our good friend Ummed there are a number of members who know Champa from her past, but mostly they chose to stay away! Anyway the overall focus of our presentation to them was "The vision, values and governance of running a UK charity" as applied to Nepal Schools Aid with the obvious goal on our part to persuade them to support us, either in helping with the management of Kesh Chandra school or with making a regular contribution towards our material support to that school. Twenty minutes later they had offered to supply 2100 exercise books as a Rotary with several members agreeing to make donations.
Result!

They think it's all over ..........

Second teachers development course completed with a different "feel" from the first and that's all down to the delegates. The previous post mentioned the issue of English language which is an obvious barrier if attendees don't match the required standard, but the delegates this time were much more accomplished and confident.
However they were also in a younger age bracket and more participative, livelier, and much more creative. It just goes to show about the danger of jumping to conclusions too soon as in yesterday's post we were thinking of running programmes to improve English speaking.
A number of the delegates were Programme Officers and Counsellors from ECCA and they said that they now intend to adapt our programmes and to run them around their 400 schools. So, we have asked them specifically to give us feedback on what we should deliver next to add to some of the topics they mentioned such as lesson planning, classroom management.

Now it's time to relax: Barbecue at Dwarikas, Everest Mountain Flight, parties in two Nepali homes, three days in the mountain resort at Dulikhel.

First courses .......

 

First two courses now completed successfully, according to all the feedback we've received anyway. The real proof of the pudding though will be in the application of the management skills and the teaching skills. Another teaching skills course begins today for a different 16 delegates.
I think we have "suffered" on both courses as a result of the varied level of spoken English skill amongst the participants. This is a big problem and we are already thinking that we may have to take a step backwards to go forward again. Specifically, should we be arranging training in English at these early stages as opposed to teaching or management skills? Any advice out there?