|
Successes in Mobilizing Community
Involvement in Schools
Participatory Rapid Appraisal/Participatory
Learning and Action (PRA/PLA) is the main start-up intervention
strategy of the Quality Improvements in the Primary Schools
(QUIPS) Project. The PRA/PLA is used to create awareness,
identify issues, determine proposed actions, and identify
strengths within the community in order to foster an environment
that is supportive of school quality development.
PRA/PLA has proven to be a very effective
tool for the QUIPS Project, especially in terms of quickly
mobilizing the community to action. One of the reasons that
it is so successful is because community members generally
have interest in their schools, but previously have not been
given opportunities to be involved in the education process.
The PRA/PLA is the first forum where all stakeholders, including
community members, have the chance to discuss their views
and together form a vision for school improvement, with specific
targets and actions to reach their goals. When communities
are equipped with a formal plan, the community school improvement
plan, they are able to effectively share in the responsibility
of their school and successfully implement meaningful improvement
activities.
One example of a very responsive community
is Kokodei in the Ashanti Region. After their initial 4-day
PRA/PLA activity in November 1999, community members were
able to translate their community school improvement plan
into action and mobilize local resources to complete several
school improvement projects. Within four months, the community
had purchased English textbooks for all primary school pupils,
constructed 80 dual desks for the primary school, and constructed
a new 4-seater latrine.
Another community, Techimantia, used the PRA/PLA
activity not only to discuss traditional school improvement
activities, but also to address the unique concerns related
to a Moslem community. Within three months of their PRA/PLA
exercise, the community raised 3.4 million cedis ($US 485)
and materials worth an additional 3 million cedis ($US 425)
to complete a previously started 3-classroom block, contributed
20 dual desks to the school, fixed electricity in an old mosque
for children's evening studies, and added two women each to
the School Management Committee (SMC) and PTA to encourage
women's participation in education. In addition, because pupils
were spending 90 minutes for Arabic Worship and school was
closing at 11 a.m. on Fridays, they changed the school schedule
to begin classes at 7 a.m. daily to make up for the lost periods
on Fridays.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Mobilizing Community
Resources to Save a School
Abutia Agorve is a small rural community
in the Volta Region. It has a population of approximately
500 and supports one primary school. This school was established
in 1935, and for many years the community was very involved
with and proud of the school. However, a marked decline in
their interest and involvement began in the early 1980s, mainly
due to the decline in the economic situation in Ghana and
the lack of resources available for education throughout the
country.
When the QUIPS intervention began in September
1999, the community was only minimally involved in the school
and the educational process. A PTA existed, but like many
community-based institutions, was not actively involved in
the school. Parents did not attend PTA meetings because they
did not see any need and the meeting times were inconvenient,
especially for the women. Parents also were negligent in providing
school supplies for their children and paying school fees.
The Social Mobilization Campaign (SMC) had been formed, but
was not functioning. Although the community contained a number
of local resources, the community had no process for utilizing
these resources for school projects.
The community members knew that their situation
was bad and were interested in changing it, but it was only
through the QUIPS intervention that they started to understand
how they could be involved in the change process. The chief,
who had always been a strong leader in the community, became
particularly energized in support of education. The SMC Chairman,
who was elected during the PRA/PLA activity and was a former
district director of education, also helped to motivate the
SMC and keep them focused on the issues and activities. Through
the strong partnership of these two leaders, the community
was able to transform the situation into one that promotes
quality education.
In recent months, the SMC and PTA have instituted
evening group studies for pupils, organized an open day (where
prizes were awarded to excelling pupils), built a gender sensitive
toilet/urinal and a kitchen for the headmistress, and provided
furniture, textbooks, teaching aids, and recreational equipment
to the school. Community members have also pitched in by assisting
in local resource mobilization, visiting the school regularly
to present gifts to teachers and check on children, and helping
in the construction of the new three-classroom block. The
school has improved so much that it has become an inspiration
to surrounding school communities. Leaders and teachers from
neighboring schools visit Abuita Agorve to attend community
functions and learn about their strategies.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Detecting Change in
Pupil Learning Growth
Improvement in pupil learning is a goal shared
by all components of any school quality program. New instructional
practices, professional development for teachers and school
managers, improved infrastructure, and community involvement
in education is of little consequence if achievement outcome
is not positively impacted. Evaluating impact on pupil achievement
is difficult to do, particularly in the context of substantial
linguistic and cultural diversity, and marked pupil differences
in academic and cognitive ability.
QUIPS has addressed this problem by developing
a set of achievement tests for use in a study design that
maximizes the chances of detecting change in achievement directly
attributed to the program interventions, even in the context
of a relatively short intervention cycle. The design focuses
on evaluating the learning growth patterns of children participating
in QUIPS in comparison to those in control schools. Impact
on learning growth will translate into sustainable achievement
advantage. In QUIPS this is evaluated by testing the same
children over time in three areas of achievement: mathematics,
English literacy, and spoken English narrative. The instruments
were designed to capture the baseline abilities of all children
tested no matter how high or how low their entry level academic
abilities are and at the same time provide sufficient "room
to grow" for the high achievers. The tests and test administration
procedures have been designed to accommodate children from
remote regions with little experience in paper and pencil
tasks and use local language instructional support to assure
that language differences do not skew results.
These new tests were first administered to
Cohort 3 pupils in February and March 2000 and the same pupils
were retested in November 2000. Excluding school breaks, pupils
attended school for approximately 6 months during the inter-test
period. Even in this short period of time, results show that
pupils attending QUIPS partnership schools have initial learning
growth rates that are significantly higher than those of pupils
from the control schools in some subject areas. Statistical
results showed that the differences in growth curves for the
QUIPS and control schools were significant.
|
