SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
(A small case study by Darvesh Karim, Faculty, AKU-IED-PDCN, Gilgit)
It is very well said that school improvement is a “systematic, sustained effort aimed to change in learning conditions and other related internal conditions in one or more schools, with the ultimate aim of accomplishing educational goals more effectively” (Hillman & Stoll, 1994), and personally I believe that for effective accomplishment of this objective a gradual and a significant period of time is required. This reflective paper focuses on the same parameters to explore the school improvement through the perception of teachers of a government girls’ pilot school in Karachi, which was loaded with 1238 students of low socio-economic background and 54 teachers with a vision to develop students who will become curious, confident and responsible citizens of the world, capable of critical decision making. I tried to critically examine this school to analyze and link with their vision on the basis of my observations, artifacts/documents analysis, and semi-structured interviews with two teachers and principal to explore the existing state of school improvement and their perceptions. The discussion of this paper is based on two visits only. However, I feel that these two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of the phenomenon which is of-course a huge area to discuss as schools are known the reflection of society (Leach, 2003). This paper outlines the state of the existing practices, procedures and perceptions of teachers according to school improvement and lastly tries to critically analyze and put forward some recommendations.
Quality education is every citizen’s right and its responsibility lies with the state therefore government sector is the largest provider of education in Pakistan. According to the general perception, normally government schools (mostly in rural areas), are nothing more than a room, chalkboard and a teacher, which can be termed as ‘something is better than nothing’. But according to my understanding this term should never be used when it comes to education. Perhaps under a political agenda some years back as a first step towards accomplishment of its vision of ‘quality education’, the provincial government had started pilot educational facilitation in every district of Karachi. The school I visited was also established as a pilot school, fully equipped with almost every facility required for a ‘good’ school in terms of its physical structure and facilities, like extended physical structure with two huge annexes/blocks with boundary walls all around, playing grounds and other facilities such as sufficient teaching staff, separate labs for home-economics, physics & computer, band facility, library, separate offices, staffroom, notice boards, special needs room, filter water, washrooms, furniture, gardens/lawn, ground-swings, canteen, girls guide room and art room.
With all this fully equipped structure and facilities, one should absolutely think that the school would be a successful school and its improvement should progress further. Of-course this would be the feelings of every reader, so the question arises here that what was the state of school improvement?
To explore the ground realities, I observed classes, assembly, staffroom; documents were analyzed and interviews were taken, which guided me to say that all these facilities were in proper use a ‘very long ago’, which become the part of school history to remember. Now, I felt and teachers also indicated that there is a lack of funding from government for maintenance and follow-up, so every facility and infrastructure is getting rotten by every single day passes.
Co-curricular activities and sporting events are not that much in practice, while very well written artifacts and honor boards were present showing success stories of past as they were updated up to 1995, which was now stopped for no reason. When enquired from Principal, she also felt the lacking and told us that because we are not getting additional grant for such activities, so we could not continue the practices. Every thing was concluding with the same excuse that we are not getting much grant from government.
School has many professionally trained teachers. When discussed with these teachers they showed that there is no motivation from the authorities and leadership. According to a teacher, “there is no praise and appreciation for a good work and no judgment for careless teachers, so our moral became down”. At that moment, I was reflecting on myself that, weather the trainings I usually get from different institutions, is just limited to get the praise from my authorities and those expertise will only be exercised, when I will be motivated by my leadership to utilize? During my observation I felt that, yes; the principal is not motivating teachers properly, but at the other hand, she has also given a free hand to practice and to take initiatives for teachers. I am sure, if these teachers initiate some new teaching strategies, principal would not be the hindering factor.
School campus was reasonably big and the support staff was very limited and it was according to principal and teachers due to non-provision of required staff from government authorities. So, they had an alternative solution for this purpose by involving students (late comers and class room punishments) to collect garbage and cleaning of classroom and school campus. According to teachers, students’ strength was very much high some years back, which has been decreased now and they were justifying it with increased number of private schools in the vicinity and blaming government that it is not providing much funds for modern facilities. However, I felt that may be this ‘punishment’ to students can be one of reasons of the decreased number of students’ enrollment.
Library and books were present, librarian ne-da-red , Science Labs, art room, home economic room were present but the respective attendants ne-da-red, and so these rooms never open. It was amazing for me that for cleaning purpose, teachers had created an alternate solution and even they had contributed to hire a lady for the preparation of tea during their break time, but for Library, labs and other facilities of school, no solution has been sorted out, but waiting for government to depute the required staff. This lacking can also be traced among the state of staff co-operation, as I found that there was lack of collaboration among teachers, although during the interview, teachers told me that there is a good collaboration, but while interviewing a teacher in staff room on a specific table, some other teachers entered and the teacher whom I was interviewing told me that we should move to another table, as this was ‘their’ table, which showed a face of balkanized culture (Stoll & Fink, 1996) among teachers. This type of collaboration is known as neither isolated nor work as a whole school. In this situation becoming on a focal point by all teachers as a team seems impossible.
Teaching and learning in school was observed as traditional teaching, very well known as ‘Talk, Chalk and Walk’ and encouraging and promoting rote memorization among students. There was no concept of group work and activity based teaching. The teachers were having an opinion that existing teaching strategies should be changed towards visual aids, classroom activities, and activity based teaching, but my mind was striking me again, that who would initiate these strategies; the government or the teachers on whom government has already spent lots of money to train them in prestigious institutions? Another problem identified by the teachers that what ever they do in their classes, they don’t get any feedback even from Head teacher as she use to observe classes but never gives feedback. According to these teachers good schools mean the school teachers with positive attitude while for bad schools they were in opinion those schools with teachers but no effective teaching.
Likewise, the school celebrations were limited to 14th Aug., 23 Mar., 6 Sep., and on asking why these days are celebrated, teachers responded that to give students knowledge about Pakistan and to create the sense of sacrifice (qurbani ka jazba)’ and to boost up the sense of love to their country (‘watan say mohabat’). On asking what other days should be celebrated, teachers told me that sports day, bait-bazi, share-o-shairi, literary debates etc. should be included in our celebration as co-curricular activities. But the question still remained un-answered, that who would initiate these activities and celebrations? While teachers were in on opinion that government should instruct us to do these things. I couldn’t figure out, that when government had instructed them to hire a lady as a personal maid and utilize students as cleaners of school!
When I asked teachers that what is good about this school and what are lacking and what are the things you would like to change? Teachers told me that school needs more facilities for students, sports are lacking, which should be increased, debates and co-curricular activities should be included. But to do all these according to the teachers there was no or less budget allocation from government. Teachers further blamed parents that they are not taking interest in their children education, which reminded me of the characteristics of a sinking school (Stoll & Fink, 1996). While, teachers told me that only few educated parents use to visit school, although school doesn’t have a proper and effective mechanism to interact with parents. I was amazed that to organize debates and other co-curricular activities what type of financial aid is required from government.
Teachers were confidently saying that our school is better than others as we are getting good board result every year and we prepare students well for board exam. School vision was displayed on the school entrance, however on asking the vision of school, teachers told me that our vision is to make students good citizens, and could be able to differentiate between good and bad.
I understand that there are continuous changes and reforms in education sector all around the world. One of the key elements in most of these reforms is the professional development of teachers. Societies are acknowledging that teachers are the most significant change agents. This role of teacher in educational reforms makes the field of teacher professional development a growing and challenging area. Definitely to bring change in teaching strategies, teachers need to be aware of the new ways of teaching. Even the best and brilliant teachers need professional knowledge to learn about teaching and learning strategies (Rizvi & Elliott, 2007). Currently this school is loaded with 12 professionally trained teachers (of-course a big human resource to motivate and effectively utilize their capacities), but there was no trend of in-school trainings, however out of school trainings for science teachers and others was existing through high ups of education department.
After having said initially that ‘schools are the reflection of society’, now it is the time for schools and responsibility of teachers to reflect back a different and positive image in society. School is a major source that will help to trigger change. This will occur only when teachers and learners are assisted in adopting classroom level initiatives that reflect new images based on positive approaches for school improvement. To bring improvement in this regard, I recommend the following strategies to change the existing state of school improvement;
1. According to my observation, every thing is available in school; the only object required is to re-shape the existing school facilities by willingness and active efforts to change (Fullan, 2001). Head teacher and every individual staff member is required to understand that traditional cultural response patterns are now not longer appropriate, they need to change. The culture of school has become dependent on government, which needs to be re-shaped with positive initiatives to create ownership of school by every stakeholder.
2. Strong leadership is required for development of shared vision and goals (Rosenholtz, 1989) through improving collegiality to create learning communities (Sergiovanni, 1998), so that a sense of ownership could be developed. Likewise, effective utilization of the capacities of existing trained staff and reforms are required to introduce instructional initiatives. This can be done through positive leadership by showing trust and empowering other staff members by distributing leadership (Gebhardt et al., 2003), which starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating (Gronn, 2003).
3. Since parents are a critical part of a learning community so their involvement is very much crucial. To involve parents in schooling activities, I suggest initiating volunteer programs involving parents for different activities or as a first step, parents can be asked to work with a child at home on reading and home work (Tinzmann et al. 1990).
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