Research Spotlight: Re-emphasizing leadership, community involvement and teacher training in education

The first featured research content in our column is from “Education in Pakistan: What works & Why” by Campaign for Quality Education (CQE). The main research objectives of the study were to identify factors and processes that were supporting some of the mainstream, i.e. catering to the low-income group, public and private schools within Pakistan achieve greater standards of quality.

Investments in education in Pakistan in the past decade or so, both from government and donors, have focused on the direct delivery of educational services such as teacher training, creation and training of school councils, supply of missing facilities, and scholarships for students. For example, the World Bank provides US$ 100 million annually to the Government of Punjab to provide free books, improve infrastructure and train teachers, under the assumption that this will increase the quality of education. USAID had been providing an amount of US$ 74.5 million from 2003 to 2007 in Sindh and Baluchistan to improve methods of education delivery by training teachers and improving the school councils and government hierarchies responsible for education in their respective districts.

CQE analyzes that while such inputs of aid have definitely been beneficial and are even necessary, they are not sufficient alone to change the education landscape of Pakistan. While aid is relatively plentiful, what is lacking are the proper people willing to innovate and reform the current education system. While the infrastructure to provide education to students and training to teachers exists, what is missing is the method to study and properly impart best case practices.

In this research a study was conducted of several schools all over Pakistan. The schools selected had demonstrated practices that were found to be both effective and efficient in the context of Pakistan. Most strikingly in every case school it was found that a dynamic leadership did wonders for the education quality. In some cases this leadership was incidental and unsupported, while in others it is given recognition as well as support. If the head teachers and principals routinely undertook rounds of the school, communicated and encouraged both teachers and the pupils and protected the interests of the school and its employees, it was found that the school benefited greatly as a result. Such teachers and principals also gain respect and recognition among the community as a result, and hence more parents become willing to send their children, especially girls, to such schools.

Given the finding that leadership matters in achieving quality schools, work must be done to retrieve potential school leaders, nurture their leadership skills, and provide them with opportunities to support reform. And hence a criterion will need to be developed to create a leadership cadre. Besides this, there needs to be a system to provide recognition to achievements of teachers in improving their knowledge and skills. The incentive regime, if developed and implemented correctly, will meet the twin purposes of identifying and retrieving the right individuals to support schools and improve teaching.

Currently school-community interaction is limited to school councils and parent-teacher associations. As research suggests, dynamic school leaders are central to mobilizing the community's support to compensate for the lack of a formal support system. However community support is found to be more effective where it is school-led and restricted to school improvement related tasks. The mere existence of school councils, however, does not guarantee community support. Where community support is present, it is less because of the school council and more because of the relationship of trust between the community and the school. The organizational form of the school council often places the teachers and the school in an adversarial relationship with only a superficial interest being paid to the community-school partnership.  And yet the study 'What Works and How' found that the schools doing really well despite limited resources had a very strong community-school partnership component; which should make increased community involvement a priority. 

Community involvement does not have to be restricted to only financial support, but can and should also extend to a monitory role. Currently the task of monitoring schools usually falls to the local district bureaucracy. However far from being a means of support and feedback, this monitoring is more akin to policing activity with a focus on administrative aspects and inputs. And hence these monitoring mechanisms do little to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. Involving the community more   actively on the other hand would be a better approach considering they have a real stake in the matter.  

Although the government is well aware of the importance of community involvement in school monitoring it would be more useful and potentially effective to involve the community via a more flexible and a less prescriptive approach. Consequently, before investing more funds in the enterprise of School Councils the form, purpose and nature of community support to schools needs to be reviewed by the government.

Reforms need institutions to support them. Teacher training institutions are present all over the country, and most teachers have been exposed to teacher training programs.  However regardless of how it was provided, where the schoolteachers had an opportunity for on-going support, they seemed to be making better use of professional development activities in their teaching practice. Where ongoing support was available, teachers were beginning to align their practice with approaches promoted by professional development. Classrooms in such schools appeared relatively more participatory,learner centered, and less didactic. The study suggests that sustained positive change in the quality of schooling doesn't necessarily require more teacher training institutes, but better ones; with a lot more importance given to following up to and sustaining teacher development . Given what it takes to establish an institution with depth and capacity, even this will be a formidable effort, though, an absolutely essential one. 

The research paper can be found here.