The BIG Questions

We have written over many days about the recent work with all our schools in Kathmandu, and now back in the UK, we can reflect on a busy month and recognise the successes, the level of motivation and the energy we have left behind us in 7 schools. Teachers are now genuinely questioning their own competence, skill levels and teaching processes as well as classroom layouts, best use of resources, the curriculum and much more. In organisational psychology terminology we would now say that "there has been a great deal of unfreezing leaving everyone in an advanced state of readiness for personal change".

This has led us to ponder a number of significant BIG questions we need to answer before we move to the next phase of our work so in the true spirit of delegation and ownership we have posed the list below to our newly formed Kathmandu Committee and will post up their considered response when it arrives:

1. What should we do with Sramik school? They are so far behind other schools intellectually, in leadership, in English and in their actions?
2. How can we make sure that all schools understand how strict we will be with our inspections in October to identify who most qualifies for computers? 
3. How do we get the Heads and individual teachers motivated to develop their English language skills themselves through reading clubs, speaking clubs, book clubs? Without it we will have difficulty in delivering more advanced training.
4. How do we get all schools developing their classroom environments physically to become more child centred? Paint, chairs, tables, cushions, chairs?
5. How do we get all schools to understand the application and the benefits of implementing the British Council's Global Schools Partnership programme?
6. Is NSA ready to employ full time Tutors on a good salary who work for us 100% of the time as resource persons and working in ALL schools?

One laptop per child?

Today we visited a small village school in a lovely remote setting several miles outside Patan. Our purpose was to view a class using the laptops we are considering purchasing and we were accompanied by Rajeev from OLE who explained everything to us during the visit. We observed an English lesson on Countable and Uncountable Nouns, whatever they are, but that's the Nepali curriculum for you. Enjoy the pictures:

“It's not the government's responsibility …...”

My headline today is a quote from a report in Sunday's Himalayan Times in Kathmandu. Has Education Become An Industry? It beggars belief that this quote comes from Mahashram Sharma, Joint Secretary of Ministry of Education! The full quote is as follows: “The government is monitoring government schools but has not been effective as it is not only the sole responsibility of the government. Other bodies like schools management, parents and District Education Office are also accountable. Due to the increase in the number of schools and an absence of invigilators it is impossible to monitor it”. 

The report and the quote/response from the Joint Secretary leads me to suggest that he and his department need a little education themselves in the difference between Implementation and Regulation. It is a failure of the latter within and across financial institutions that has led to the economic crises around the world and undoubtedly it is a lack of focused regulation that is partly to blame for the utter mess in which Nepal's education system finds itself. The outstanding requirement is that the school management committees, Head Teachers and indeed the parent groups within communities are accountable for implementing the government's education policies and practices. The accountability for regulation including oversight is solely on the shoulders of government and if Mr Sharma doesn't recognise this then he is no fit person to be in such a lofty position. In a wider sense the article highlights “the battleground” of education in which the combatants are private schools, government schools, teachers, unions, student unions, guardian's association and others, all taking conflicting stands on how the system should be developed or moved forward. Unfortunately “the stakeholders” as they are described are nothing more that groups with unmitigated self interest with no selfless interest in quality education or the children of Nepal. They argue with each other over pay, fees, status, book supply, and a host of other issues absolutely irrelevant to education when the system is riddled with outmoded teaching practices, assessment strategies focused on remembering rather than understanding and applying, and a curriculum which neither flows within subjects nor has much connection with reality. To support my latter assertion today I visited one of the schools assisted by my organisation (Nepal Schools Aid) after just having completed 8 days training in child centred learning for 40 government teachers. One of our best teachers was asking me about improving English Language teaching at class 1 & 2 levels. The curriculum and it's assessment approach drives these teachers to deliver rote classes and I asked her to read me a paragraph from a magazine I had. Her English is exceptionally good and she read it word perfect with no problems of accent or pronunciation. I then asked her to find me three nouns, two pronouns, and two prepositions from the paragraph. To say that she was embarrassed was an understatement, but I told her that I doubted that many people (children and adults) could have analysed the paragraph grammatically either though they can speak perfect English! To me this is the hub of the problem, a complete disconnection between curriculum and the demands of the real world. Until the Ministry understands this and gets some real focused help from the likes of DFID who seem to think that building a school is more important than transformation of the education system, policies, concepts and content, there will be NO improvement in the mess that is Nepal's education system.

The real test begins!

One phase ends, another one starts which in this case is some perception tests on class 4 and class 5 children in our schools. Having completed 8 days of training we are rapidly conducting two perception tests on cohorts of children which focus on their views on learning and quality education. The same cohort will be retested in September to see if changes in teaching style have changed perceptions amongst the children. We have given this work as a project to one of our Tutors, Bashu, and he made a good job today of administering the tests in his own school, Bal Bigyan, before moving on to repeat them in Bal Vinod school. The pictures tell today's story: