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The most significant factor affecting learner performance is teacher quality, and the effect is greatest for the children of the poor. The research is unequivocal: the conceptual knowledge of our teachers is low; teachers have a poor grasp of the subjects they teach; there is a high level of teacher error in the content and concepts presented in lessons; and teachers have low expectations of learners (particularly poor learners) who then achieve to these low expectations and motivation and challenge is reduced. Whether curriculum changes that have been introduced are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is less important than building the professional confidence of teachers, and excellence in teaching. How do we improve quality? The most important investment we can make is to provide for teachers to select from a range of academically rigorous learning opportunities of high quality that are credible and useful to them and which will build their own literacy and confidence in the subject matter they teach; which will deepen their understanding of curriculum and pedagogy; and which will excite them about learner potential. In pursuing these opportunities, they must have sufficient time to read and think and write, and to reflect on their practice. - extract from SUNDAY TIMES ARTICLE by Prof Mary Metcalfe (13/01/08) on education quality in Africa.
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From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes:
An unfinished agenda - an evaluation of World Bank support to Primary Education
(2006) Independent Evaluation Group, The World Bank, Washington DC
This evaluation assesses World Bank assistance to countries in their efforts to improve their basic knowledge and skills base through the provision of quality primary education, particularly since the beginning of the EFA movement in 1990. It aims to provide lessons for countries in their development strategies, and for the Bank in its support of those strategies. It found that only about one in five projects had an explicit objective to improve student learning outcomes. This does not mean that projects were unconcerned about quality but until recently this was mostly seen in terms of delivery of inputs and services.
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Scaling Up by Focusing Down: Creating space to expand education reform
(2003) J. Samoff, E.M. Sebatane, M.Dembélé
Paper for inclusion in the publication resulting from the Biennial Meeting of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, Arusha, Tanzania, 7–11 October 2001
“Going to scale” has been the advice and the injunction in African education for several decades. The challenge of scaling up, however, has proved difficult to achieve. The primary concern in this review is to contribute to resolving the many contested issues of education reform and scaling up by reporting findings, highlighting major themes, and framing issues for discussion and negotiation. Addressing efforts to scale up requires recognizing that some initiatives may be viable precisely because they are small. Accordingly, rather than replicating the specific elements of the reform, what must be scaled up are the conditions that permitted the initial reform to be successful and the local roots that can sustain it.
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The Challenge of Learning: Improving the Quality of Basic Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
(2003) Adriaan M. Verspoor (editor)
Document presented at the 2003 ADEA biennial meeting
This comprehensive edited book includes chapters on cost-effective allocation of resources (Alain Mingat); relevant curriculum (Martial Dembélé & Mamadou Ndoye); teacher development (Martial Dembélé); diversity (John Oxenham); managing improvement (Jordan Naidoo) and assessment (Thomas Kellaghan and Vincent Greaney), amongst others.
A summary is also available.
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Quality Education and HIV & AIDS
(2006) UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education
This paper presents a framework for quality education that demonstrates how education systems can and must change their operations in relation to HIV and AIDS. Effective learning is critical, in particular the relationship between the learner and the educator. But the inputs, processes, results and outcomes that surround and foster, or hamper, learning are key as well. These factors can be seen as affecting learning at two levels – at the level of the learner and at the level of the learning system. The paper divides each of these levels into five dimensions and demonstrates how each must consider the HIV and AIDS pandemic.
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Quality of Basic Education
(2003) David Stephens
Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2003/4 Gender and Education for All: The Leap to Equality
This paper reviews the concept of ‘quality’ in education; examines the relationship between the quality of education and gender equality in schooling; looks at the various modes of delivery (e.g. curriculum content, pedagogy), assessment of student performance, and evaluation of the education system; reviews the best indicators for monitoring progress towards education of acceptable quality; and provides examples of strategies or initiatives aimed at improving the quality of education in different national settings, with a particular focus on gender issues.
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Defining Quality in Education
(2000) UNICEF
This paper examines research related to five dimensions of education quality: what learners bring, environments, content, processes, and outcomes.
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