Ridiculous Ministry comment!

A short report in today's Himalayan Times has almost sent us into orbit with its muddle headed pathetic thinking, which is just plain WRONG. Read it for yourselves and judge whether this man has ever been anywhere near a school in the last decade and how he concludes that embracing new technology and digital methods is the way forward. It's like building a roof of a house before the foundations and walls have been built! How about improving teaching standards first, how about some simple training in child centred learning for existing teachers, how about getting teachers to discover and use basic resources readily available first ...... ??? What planet is he on!!!

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Education Secretary Kishor Thapa has vowed to innovate classrooms of schools and universities in Nepal after coming back from a three-day conference in London.

Thapa said educational programmes should be aimed at embracing new technology and digital methods to upgrade standards in Nepal.

The focus of annual conference, organised by UK’s Education Ministry, was on classrooms changes due to technological innovation of this decade. 

Secretary, along with Nepali Education Minister, had attended the gathering of ministers of 60 countries and other 10 representatives. 

“Children and teachers are using smart boards in the classrooms in developing countries. Teachers can take many classes at the same time, eBooks can be the reading materials and exams can be of internet-based,” said Thapa, talking to this daily.

Keeping our feet on the ground

The third Foundation course in our initial series of five has just been completed with another 21 attendees, five days spread over 6 days because of a break in the middle caused by yet another national strike!

This course was exceptionally pleasing because we had 5 Head Teachers attending who now realise that in order to motivate their staff through the programme and to implement some changes, they need to know the content themselves. There was some reluctance at first; "I don't need this I'm already trained, I don't need this I don't do any teaching etc" but with more of their teachers returning from our courses they seem to be getting the message. So, that's 9 of the 15 registered school's Heads now having attended, let's hope we can get the remaining 6 trained this month on the next two Foundations.

The courses are going well from a content and organisation point of view too, no major adjustments needed and all the delegates enjoying and buying in to our view of the concepts and skills needed to develop the Nepal education system and Nepal schools. 

Word of our programme is spreading too with some renewed interest from the Ministry of Education who want to talk to us again about spreading the programme even wider (!) and a stream of enquiries from other schools not currently registered and NGO's or agencies asking about a "partnership" with us.(whatever that means) Keeping our feet on the ground is our motto for the week/month/year/5 years!

NSA Education Experiment #1106!

Organisations either grow or decline, but they never stand still. This was one of the first principles I ever learned as a young organisational psychologist and I was never sure whether the original quote came from someone in the Isaac Newton mould (a scientific truth) or from the Buddha himself (one of the Noble Truths). In the end it didn't matter, because it's true; all organisations MUST grow or in fact they will decline, and this is the principle we have applied to NSA from Day One in 2007. Growth is as much about intellectual development as increases in income, resources, and influence, and this is why I must often drive colleagues to the point of insanity by constantly instituting "experiments" in schools, on courses, at events, just to see what will happen and whether we can develop "a better way" or a "new/additional way" of doing something.

We currently have two such experiments underway in Kathmandu, which if successful could make educationalists really sit up in Nepal. Both are being conducted by Babita in two of our partner schools and involve the topics of Phonics and P4C. When she was in the UK recently Babita received a lot of specialist training in these two areas and we are currently running a 12 weeks pilot programme where Babita teaches these two topics for half a day in each school every day.Class 1 & 2 are receiving Phonics lessons to learn to read and speak English, and Classes 3-6 are receiving P4C sessions (renamed by us to V4C,Values For Children). We have conducted perception tests on Classes 3-6 in each school using MALS and QEQ and will retest after 3 months to see if there is any change in the child's perception of their education, the school, their teachers and so on. Separately Babita will continuously assess the children in Class 1 & 2 for progress through Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the UKs Letters & Sounds syllabus. 

Will we see any difference in test scores? Will the children's English speaking ability improve? Will children's behaviour change influenced by regular values-based lessons? We certainly hope so, but this is the sort of experiment we MUST conduct before we have the right to train Nepalese teachers in any depth in these topics. We need evidence we can present to the Ministry of Education if we are to grow to our next stage of development, evidence we take for granted in the UK, but this is not acceptable if you are trying to influence a whole country to change!

We cannot leave this article without acknowledging who set us down this path, and we are very grateful to Dr Sue Palmer at The Phonics Academy for her development of our knowledge and thinking about phonics, to Lizzy Lewis at SAPERE for her encouragement to use P4C in the first place, and finally to Jason Buckley, The Philosophy Man, who patiently trained yours truly in the basics of the P4C technique. We would encourage anyone interested in these subjects to visit their respective websites:

The Phonics Academy  

SAPERE

The Philosophy Man

"The key to quality education..............."

The letter from Barry Hitchcock, Nepal Director at Asia Development Bank has prompted much discussion amongst Trustees and supporters, and one comment is worthy of a full posting. Janice Brockbank is Educational Advisor to NSA and has been much involved in the creation of our teacher training Academy and the provision of volunteer teachers to work and run training programmes in Kathmandu. In essence we are all stakeholders with an interest in developing Nepal's education system and therefore we all hold a piece of the jigsaw which is vital to making up the whole picture. 

Janice says:

"This note is directed towards Mr Hitchcock whose response to NSA demonstrates genuine openess to listen to all who have a desire to improve education in Nepal. 

It is encouraging that ADB recognises that the largest of philanthropic organisations may not necessarily have all the necessary information to create the essential impact required. Support has been supplied in many forms historically with no significant impact so 'doing more of the same' is unlikely to work.

NSA has created a blue print for quality education that is not currently addressed in SSRP. NSAs Academy training programme targets the heart of quality learning which requires skilful and motivated teachers. Bricks and mortar and statistics of increased attendance look impressive providing evidence and data that is simple to collect but it is the interaction between effective teaching and children that will raise standards and the quality of education for the future citizens of Nepal.

Dr Brian and Champa Metters have established a practical, innovative training programme providing a key to open the door to quality education. It is not too great a statement to suggest that NSAs Academy 'blueprint' has the potential to transform learning for children and young people in Nepal should its principles be adopted and supported by Nepal's Ministry of Education and rolled out nationwide." 

We will be following up with our own response to Mr Hitchcock in a few days time.