Education System

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Jamaica: Gov’t Looking to Create Integrated Higher Education System

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Jamaica/ May 15, 2018/By Rochelle Williams/Source: http://jis.gov.jm

The Government is looking to create an Integrated Higher Education System for Jamaica (IHES-J) aimed at better aligning training to industry demands.

Portfolio Minister, Senator the Hon. Ruel Reid, made the disclosure while addressing the opening of the Ministry’s inaugural Higher Education Summit on May 10 at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston.

“This integration is expected to be supported with policies and systems to support greater autonomy, greater alignment to industry and a flexible approach to funding to support the needs of the institutions, while ensuring that students are being trained in areas that are required by industry and will ultimately impact the economy,” he said.

He said that despite deliberations over the years, limited progress has been made in addressing the need for greater integration of education and training.

“Our hope is that coming out of these discussions (at the summit) we will be able to agree on the needed and significant steps forward together,” he said.

The two-day summit, under the theme: ‘Education 4.0: Disrupting Tradition…Transforming Jamaica,’ provided a platform for stakeholders to discuss and provide feedback on a number of issues critical to the development of the higher education sector.

From the consultations, the Ministry will seek to establish a declaration, which will encapsulate the core principles around which the Government will be able to define and pass legislation with regards to matters of governance, quality assurance and regulation of higher education.

In his address, Senator Reid highlighted the importance of higher education to the development of the country.

He said that among the national imperatives are: to increase the percentage of eligible cohort holding the minimum of a bachelor’s degree from 15 per cent to 80 per cent; remove barriers to access; and ensure that institutions are responsive to the changing dynamics and requirements of the labour market.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dean-Roy Bernard, in his contribution, stressed that a key objective of the deliberations is to ensure that higher education is supporting the economic growth agenda.

“We hear many times of the 67 per cent of our workforce that are untrained and uncertified. This summit is to ensure that we are reducing those numbers rapidly,” he said.

Over the two days, experts in education and industry made presentations on a range of topics including: ‘Higher Education, Governance and the Oversight Framework’; ‘Autonomy within the Higher Education Sector’; ‘Funding the Higher Education Sector’; and ‘Relevance, Innovation and Leadership.’

Among those in attendance were members of external quality assurance body, University Council of Jamaica (UCJ); regulatory body, Jamaica Tertiary Education Commission (J-TEC); the Council of Community Colleges of Jamaica (CCCJ) and their member institutions; and student representatives

Source:

http://jis.gov.jm/govt-looking-to-create-integrated-higher-education-system/

 

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India: Primary Problem. Gujarat’s Dismal School Education System

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India/May 08, 2018/by RITU SHARMA/ Source: http://indianexpress.com

Last month, the Gujarat government wrapped up its eighth edition of evaluation of government primary schools, Guntosav. The findings of the National Achievement Survey, released by the Centre’s HRD Ministry in January, overall paint a dismal state of school education in Gujarat.

Despite the Gujarat government’s claim of improving the quality of education, the situation on the ground is very different. With the state facing criticism for failing to do a lot, the findings of the National Achievement Survey (NAS), released by the Centre’s HRD Ministry in January, shows that the state has a lot of catching up to do.

The survey, which was conducted in all the 33 districts of the state interviewing over 1.25 lakh students, shows a consistent decline in the learning levels of students in mathematics, language and science from Class III to Class VIII in the government school system — both government schools and government-aided schools. The drop in the overall learning levels being sharp in all the three subjects.

For instance, the response level of students fell from 65 to 47 per cent in mathematics, 71 per cent to 64 per cent in language and 68 to 52 per cent in science subjects.

The dismal state of the primary education in Gujarat could be gauged from the NAS findings. For example, in Class III, 41 per cent of students could not read and write numbers up to 999. The situation worsens as one interviews students from higher classes. For instance, more than half of the 41,393 Class VIII students (53 per cent) could not solve problems on daily life situations involving addition and subtraction of fractions and decimals and nearly 7 out of 10 students (69 per cent) could not calculate the surface area and volume of a cuboidal and cylindrical object.

 

 

While 4 out of 10 students of Class V could not read and write numbers bigger than 1000 being used in their surroundings, 56 per cent of Class VIII students could not interpret division and multiplication of fractions.

Faring even low in social science, only 27 per cent Class VIII students were able to describe the functioning of rural and urban local government bodies and 91 per cent failed to justify judicious use of natural resources. However, when it came to issues related to caste, women, social reforms, 63 per cent students could analyse them. At the same time more than half of the Class VIII students failed to apply knowledge of Fundamental Rights to find about their violation in a given situation.

The good news from the survey was the performance of girls performing marginally better than boys. However, when it comes to gender enrolment ratio — percentage of eligible girl population (in the age group of 18 to 23 years) pursuing higher education — Gujarat is in the bottom heap of eight states with poor GER ratio. [See What after school?]

NAS vis-à-vis Gunotsav

While the state government claims of improving the quality of school education through its own Gunotsav surveys, lakhs of students failed to write simple sentences in their mother tongue, Gujarati. As reported by The Indian Express earlier, the Gunotsav VI results revealed that despite attempts being made to improve performance of the students, the state’s average could reach only 53.4 per cent — same as the last Gunotsav V.

Even as the state government claims that in the last seven years, schools under Grade A category has increased from 5 to 2,100, the NAS findings show a geographically skewed performance of schools.

For Class VIII, four districts scored a mean average of below 50 in the NAS. While Bharuch scored 44, two districts from Saurashtra — Amreli and Jamnagar — scored 29 and 48, respectively. The tribal districts of Sabarkantha and Narmada scored 48 and 46, respectively.

In Bharuch, the district with lowest performance learning outcomes, only 25.41 per cent students could solve problems related to daily life situations involving rational numbers, 26.13 per cent could calculate surface area and volume of a cuboidal and cylindrical object, 27.10 per cent could generalise properties of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of rational numbers through patterns and 30.48 per cent could solve problems related to conversion of percentage to fraction and decimal and vice versa.

However, if the performance of Class III, V and VIII are taken together, then nine of the total 33 districts make it to the bottom of the heap. They are Vadodara, Chhota Udepur, Surendranagar, Bharuch, Narmada, Anand, Jamnagar, Sabarkantha and Amreli. (See box)

For the government, the solace from the NAS findings is that the government schools have performed marginally better than grant-in-aid schools across the three subjects as well as classes. For instance, in Class III, the learning level of students in government schools in environment science is 68, compared to 63 of grant-in-aid schools, 72 against 69 in language and 65 against 61 in mathematics. In Class V, the performance gap in science was 10 per cent, maths 12 per cent and language 7 per cent with government school students faring better than grant-in aid schools. Similarly, in Class VIII, the highest gap is in social science where 54 per cent students of government schools could perform exercises compared to 46 per cent students of in grant-in-aid schools.

These numbers may be comforting for the government, but the NAS surveys and the government’s own reports point to poor school infrastructure and need for better quality teachers.

According to the government’s own data, a large number of posts of teachers and principals are lying vacant in government schools. In the residential schools in the tribal districts, the figure is staggering — over one-third teachers’ posts are lying vacant.

The state government runs several categories of residential schools — Eklavya Girls Residential schools, Adarsh Nivasi Shala, Model schools and Ashram Shalas in the 14 tribal districts of the state. But poor facilities in such affect the education. For instance, the government has spent over Rs 6.5 lakh to improve English among the students in one tribal district of Dang. But the same district has the highest percentage of vacant posts (47.3 per cent) among the seven tribals districts, according to the government’s reply in the last Assembly session.

The NAS too has found poor pupil-teacher ratio in the state. According to it, 41 per cent of schools in Gujarat has pupil-teacher ratio of above 40. Nationally, the percentage of such schools is only 29 per cent. Similarly, while the healthy pupil-teacher ratio of fewer than 20 is found in 29 per cent of schools annually, it is only 15 per cent in Gujarat.

The survey also found that 47 per cent of the 2,630 teachers taught students of Class V the same subject they pursued during their higher studies. It also found that 18 per cent of school buildings were in need of urgent repair.

Fee regulation quagmire

In all these years, the crumbling school infrastructure and the declining standard of education in government and government-aided schools have led to a boom in the number of private schools in the state. Though the number of government schools stands at 44,000, the state currently has over 16,000 private schools — 9,300 primary, 3,800 secondary and 3,100 higher secondary schools.

The increase in demand of private schools also led to a surge in the fees. With parents finding it difficult to pay high fees, the government last year passed a law to regulate the school fees. The Gujarat Self Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act is aimed at fixing the annual fees at Rs 15,000 for primary eduction, Rs 25,000 for secondary and higher secondary (non-Science). However, the law has not been implemented till now in full due to numerous litigations and political slugfest over it.

“Trying to have some control over private schools in a way is good, but its political misuse made schools and education sector lose its dignity,” Gujarat Self Financed School Management Federation general secretary Bharat Gajipara.

The federation claims that the schools are ready to fix the fee at Rs 15,000 for the primary classes, but the state government should also lay down specific guidelines. “For instance, there needs to be guidelines on how much fans a classroom should have; how many children should be in a class; how many teachers among other things. We are ready not to collect extra fees, the government can keep that but give our teachers salaries and the expenses incurred by the school,” Gajipara says.

Even the parents are not happy with the turn of the events. “We have lost faith on all fronts in the last one year. More than any good, the fee regulation Act has harmed everybody,” says Amit Panchal, one of the parents spearheading the protests for over an year now. “The stricter implementation of the Act could be one measure to safeguard affordable quality education but for a long-term solution, the state government needs to improve its government as well as grant-in-aid schools. To counter the burgeoning fee demand of private schools, there is a necessity to raise an alternate affordable education system, which in this case are government and grant-in-aid schools,” says Sukhdev Patel, founder of Waali Swaraj Manch, a parents’ outfit.

Govt’s defence

The state government, however, blames the “falling standards of primary education” on the landmark Right to Education Act and its no detention policy. The law which was enacted by the previous UPA government at the Centre has been consistently opposed by BJP-led government in the state, demanding the rules to be revoked for the last two years.

“In the NCERT meeting with the Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, I had categorically stated that until the Right to Education Act’s provision for no holding back a student till Class VIII is done away with, the quality of primary education will deteriorate,” says Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said.

But the government’s own measures to improve quality of education by introducing NCERT books has led to criticism. Some of the government’s policies like making Gujarati compulsory till Class VIII in all boards in a phased manner has led to a resentment among schools as well as parents. “The new lot of vidyasahayaks (primary teachers) is very talented and intelligent. I am sure with the energy and dedication, the government school students will be at par with any good private school,” Chudasama promises.

http://indianexpress.com/article/education/hardlook-state-of-education-in-gujarat-part-ii-5166122/
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Interview: States are favoring school choice at a steep cost to public education

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By The Associated Press

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Derek W. Black, University of South Carolina

(THE CONVERSATION) Teacher strikes are generating a healthy focus on how far public education funding has fallen over the past decade. The full explanation, however, goes beyond basic funding cuts. It involves systematic advantages in terms of funding, students and teachers for charter schools and voucher programs as compared to traditional public schools. Increasing public teacher salaries may end the current protests, but speaking as an expert in education law and policy, I believe it won’t touch the new normal in which public education is no longer many states’ first priority.

My forthcoming research shows that, from funding and management practices to teacher and student policies, states are giving charter schools and private schools a better deal than public schools. These better deals have fueled enormous growth in charter schools and voucher programs that is now nearly impossible to unwind.

The most basic shift occurred between 2008 and 2012. Florida and North Carolina illustrate the nationwide trend. Each cut public education funding by 20 percent or more in three years. During the same period, North Carolina lifted its cap on new charter schools and quickly doubled its charter school spending. Florida similarly changed the rules for its voucher program and quadrupled its size.

States also passed laws to offer charters and private schools more money for each student they took. Florida increased the value of each voucher by roughly US$2,000. Nevada went even further, passing legislation that would convert every single public education dollar into a voucher dollar. While the state Supreme Court later declared the program unconstitutional, it has not stopped other states like Arizona from pursuing similar programs.

Several states also began lifting income eligibility limits. Previously, states had provided vouchers only for low-income students. But new voucher programs made them available to wealthy students as well, even those who already had access to excellent public schools.

Charter schools benefited from similar advantages in some states. Ohio and New Jersey funneled charter school funding through school districts, but the states’ antiquated funding formulas and charter reimbursement rates force districts to send charter schools more per pupil than they receive from the state.

Pennsylvania has a similar scheme, but it has proven so lopsided that it expanded deficits in Philadelphia and nearly bankrupted the Chester School District. Chester was paying the local charter school roughly $40,000 per special education student, including for those students with relatively low-cost needs. Arizona took a simpler route. It shielded charter schools from the budget cuts it was imposing on traditional public schools.

Once they receive the money, charter schools and private schools receiving vouchers can spend it almost any way they want. Private schools operate just as they had before. And charter schools – though technically public schools – are exempt from typical financial oversight.

Laws require public schools to award contracts through a transparent process and prohibit public schools from entering contracts that pose conflicts of interest. Charters can award contracts to almost anyone they like – and on any terms they like. This includes awarding contracts to companies that have close financial ties with the charter. A person can start a purportedly nonprofit charter school and then have that charter purchase all of its services and supplies from a company owned by that same person. As a result, the person can turn a profit on staffing, facilities, technology and supplies. National Heritage Academies runs this exact type of business model in North Carolina and continues to grow its campuses.

The same activity could constitute fraud or criminality in a public school. Yet, state law permits it for charters. As Thomas Kelley’s analysis reveals, many of the charter schools that state law calls nonprofits would not qualify for that same label under federal law.

Even well-meaning charter schools have been unable to stop this profit-taking. The Ohio Supreme Court, for instance, found that state law dictates that everything a private charter school company purchases with public dollars – from desks to computers – belongs to the private company, not the public. The same is true of buildings that charter schools lease. Charter school operators reap their largest profits through unreasonably high lease payments on buildings that the public will never own.

States also allow private schools and charters to treat students differently. While public schools must provide disadvantaged students with a host of special services, private schools take vouchers with almost no strings attached. And they are increasingly taking high-achieving middle-income and nondisabled students who cost less to educate and typically do not demand specialized services.

Charter schools’ advantages come in their ability to recruit students and cap enrollment. Public schools must serve everyone in their community. The clearest proof that charters don’t is in the data. For instance, Newark charter schools enroll less than half the percentage of special education students and English language learners as the Newark public schools. Newark charters also enroll significantly fewer low-income students. In North Carolina, charter schools are increasingly enrolling white students, while public schools increasingly enroll students of color. In Minneapolis, 80 percent of charters are racially isolated by race, socioeconomic status or both.

The most obvious advantage, however, is with teachers. Most states exempt charter schools from teacher certification requirements. Half exempt charters from complying with high-stakes teacher evaluation systems. More than three-quarters exempt charters from the teacher salary and collective bargaining rules. In short, states permit charters to hire teachers that would be deemed unqualified in a public school and pay them less.

The current debate over school funding must move beyond teacher salaries and whether the books in public schools are tattered. Those conversations ignore the systematic policies that disadvantage public schools. Increasing public school teachers’ salaries alone won’t fix the problem. The public school teaching force has already shrunk. Class sizes have already risen. And the rules that advantage charter and private schools remain firmly in place.

Long-term solutions require a reexamination of these preferences. As a state constitutional matter, the law requires that states make public education their first priority. It is not enough to make education one of several competing priorities. And as a practical matter, states cannot continue to ask public schools to work with whatever is left over and then criticize them for doing a poor job. This cycle creates a circular justification for dismantling public education when states should be repairing it.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/states-are-favoring-school-choice-at-a-steep-cost-to-public-education-95395.

Source:

https://wtop.com/education/2018/04/states-are-favoring-school-choice-at-a-steep-cost-to-public-education/

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Rwanda: ‘Smart Classrooms’ a Top Priority – Government

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África/ Rwanda/ 23.04.2018 / By Jean d’Amour Mbonyinshuti/ From: All África.

Equipping secondary schools with ‘smart classrooms’ remains a government priority in education sector and there is optimism that all public schools will have been connected by 2020, according to Rwanda Education Board (REB).

The aim of smart classrooms is to incorporate ICT into various aspects of the country’s education system and revolutionarise teaching and learning systems, said Dr Irénée Ndayambaje, the director general of REB.

The policy seeks to integrate technology in all education processes such as preparation, delivery of lessons, assessments, research among others.

Ndayambaje said the aim is to have all 1,500 schools equipped with smart classrooms but so far only 645 schools are equipped countrywide.

 He was speaking on Wednesday in Kigali during a training session for teachers on the use of ICT in schools.

A smart classroom should be equipped with computers connected to the internet with a screen projector among other aspects, officials said.

 Ndayambaje said the Ministry of Education is working with other ministries such as the Ministry of Infrastructure to avail electricity and solar energy adopted in areas which are yet to get on-grid electricity.

He said that smart classrooms will bring about positive change both for teachers and learners as the latter would get a wide range of resources, while the former would be taught using a wide range of resources other than using a single book.

He urged the teachers to put into good use the acquired hands-on skills to impart such skills to their colleagues in their respective schools.

«You have acquired hands-on skills from the training and you are expected to impart them to other teachers, you are advised to let us know any challenges you encounter,» he added

In 2014, the Ministry of Education entered a partnership with Microsoft Corporation that seeks to incorporate information and communication technology into various aspects of the country’s education sector.

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/201804200017.htm

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Need to give quality education in India to students who fly overseas: Rajan

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India/March 27, 2018/By: Anup Roy & Nikhat Hetavkar/Source: http://www.business-standard.com

We have fantastic institutions. But remember, we have so many young children coming in now, looking for admission into colleges, says Rajan.

Eminent economist and former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan is part of an elite group that launched a unique undergraduate liberal arts private university. In an exclusive chat with Anup Roy and Nikhat Hetavkar, Rajan says there is a need to give quality education in India to students who fly overseas every year. Edited excerpts:You are on the advisory council of KREA University. Will you be teaching also? Just like I was previously associated with ISB (Indian School of Business), I go there once in a while, I taught a course there, and I visit classes. My wife teaches there now. So, there will be an engagement of course. I am working with the academic council and the board. It’s a bunch of people who have come together. I don’t want to occupy any bigger position than I am holding now. I am merely helping, along with a large group of very dedicated people.You are a product of an Indian education system.What do you think the system is lacking now? We have fantastic institutions. But remember, we have so many young children coming in now, looking for admission into colleges. And our system is inadequate in terms of numbers to serve all of them with high-quality education. And of course, every time there is an opportunity to rethink what the old institutions are doing. Can we do things differently? Is there room for something new even when the old continues? We need more institutions to meet the demand. We have 100,000 students going abroad every year. So, we have room for at least 100 universities of very high quality to service those 100,000 students. We have the freedom to create a new model and that’s what is exciting.Why is Dr Rajan, who is very much a public figure, not engaged in the public education system, and why do you have to branch out to the private sphere? It’s not much of private. The intention is to make it available to those who qualify. There will be scholarships for those who can’t afford to pay. There is far more flexibility in creating a new institution when you come together without the existing structures.

That’s why it’s important to try and experiment outside the formal public structure.But even then the fee is Rs 700,000-800,000 per annum for a four-year course. This is what it costs. When we talk about IITs, you will have to look at what the true cost per student the country is paying. Now that is buried somewhere in the government budget. And students are paying only a fraction of it. I paid a fraction of the cost it took the country to educate me. With private institutions, the cost is all out there. If you want quality, you want to pay your faculty a reasonable amount, you want buildings as places in which you feel like learning, you have to spend money. What we are trying to say is that we will try and ensure that anybody who is admitted can afford to pay. Certainly in this country we can’t subsidise education too much.

Education inflation was always a worrying factor for you. Now that if you have such a high fee structure for a premier institute, there is a good chance that other private institutions will hike their fees. I don’t think the intention is to make enormous amounts of money here. This is a not-for-profit institute. What we will try to do is to keep it as affordable as possible. But you have to ensure a certain quality of education. Now if this institution turns out to be overly expensive, alternatives will come up. Competition will always work, even in the education market. We have lots of entities that can provide quantity, but we need to ensure that we have at least some that can provide quality. As I said, there are institutions that are very respectable out there.

Will it have courses like monetary economics etc, where you could be engaged? I think there would be a course in economics. Any course in economics will certainly teach undergrads micro economics, macro-economics and so on. The extent to which it specializes into master’s level courses that will have to stage two or three down the line. Initially what we want to give is strong undergrad curriculum for the students who are coming in.

Source:

http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/need-to-give-quality-education-in-india-to-students-who-fly-overseas-rajan-118032400010_1.html

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The paradox of weakness and strength in Chinese education

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China/March 20, 2018/Source: http://www.livemint.com

China has ring-fenced and created a stream of excellence, within a larger system that still needs work, in the best schools in urban areas, in the most prosperous provinces.

The global media has been obsessed with China for several decades now. In some cases, this is out of admiration, but in most cases the obsession is driven by a combination of envy and fear of the rising Asian giant.

The China narrative is mostly about the rise and decline of the Chinese growth rate; its massive foreign exchange reserves; its high investment rate; its excellent infrastructure; how it became the manufacturing hub of the world; how it is sucking up hydrocarbons and other natural resources from all over the world; how it bullies its neighbours around the South China Sea; its Himalayan game of chess with India; and the Belt Road Initiative that will consolidate China’s strategic reach across the entire Eurasian landmass.

These aspects of China’s rise are no doubt important, but they are of much less long-term strategic significance compared to the control of knowledge. The control of geography, resources and markets has been long been supplanted by control over technology as the key driver of global competition, and that is now being rapidly supplanted by control of knowledge.

In what is now called an emerging knowledge-based society, the control of knowledge will dominate all other dimensions of global competition. Just as the Battle of Waterloo is said to have been won in the playing fields of Eton, the battle for future global dominance will be won in the schools, colleges and universities of the world.

In that context, while recently scanning some data on education in China, I was shocked to find that net enrolment in primary education in China today (2014 data) at 90% is lower than the 95% rate that had already been achieved way back in 1987, over 30 years ago.

I also found it difficult to square this with the results of global learning tests like the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), which routinely show Chinese students scoring very high. In the recently released PISA results for 2015, for instance, China has been ranked 6th out of 77 participating countries in mathematics, 10th in science and 32nd in reading.

To understand what accounts for this apparent paradox, I decided to probe a little deeper into the story of Chinese education.

My first thought was that perhaps the data showing such retrogression in primary school enrolment was wrong, so I checked the data on primary school completion rates, the proportion of the relevant age cohort who successfully complete primary school. Here too I found the completion rate was lower in 2014 compared to what it was some 30 years earlier. How come?

The story goes back to a foundational urban bias built into the Chinese education system from 1949 when the Communist Party led government first came to power. Recognizing the strategic importance of an educated and skilled urban working class for rapid industrialization, the federal government took the responsibility of delivering free primary education for children in urban areas.

In rural areas the responsibility of providing primary education was given to village governments, who had to raise resources from the people themselves, the income of the communes, etc.

Also the “hukao” system of internal passports, no longer strictly enforced, which tied children down to the places of their parents’ origin, reified the urban bias by making it virtually impossible for rural persons to migrate to urban areas.

Despite the urban bias, and the shocks of the Great Leap Forward movement of the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the system worked reasonably well and there was a very rapid spread of education at all levels.

But the reforms ushered in by Deng Xiaoping after 1977 completely disrupted the primary education system in rural areas where most people lived. It was one of the worst unintended consequences of the reforms. With the introduction of the private responsibility system in agriculture, village governments could no longer count on the resources of the village communes to finance village schools. Inevitably the primary education system in rural areas simply fell apart.

Since the turn of the century the state has tried to repair the system by making county governments responsible for primary education. But clearly this is still a work in progress as the retrogression of primary enrolment and completion rates show.

Then how come the high PISA ranks in global learning tests?

It has been pointed out that the students who participated in the 2015 PISA tests were drawn from the provinces of Jiangsu, Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai, most of which are far more prosperous than other provinces of China. They have much better education facilities and teachers than most other provinces. The performance of students from these provinces, it is therefore suggested, is not at all representative of the rest of China.

But this is not the whole story. In the cities, where educational facilities are anyway much better than in rural areas, the government has created “key schools”. These are elite schools with much better quality teachers, infrastructure and other facilities compared to normal schools. They are intended as centres of excellence to nurture specially talented students. Though admission is supposedly based on merit, children of rich parents can also be admitted to these schools by paying hefty fees.

A second category of elite schools, called “choice schools”, are preferred schools where, again, rich children can get admitted by paying hefty fees.

In the Chinese system of streaming students between technical and vocational education and academic education, these special schools within the academic stream produce the elite base of students from among whom the specially talented students are streamed for the best institutions of higher education.

Thus, while repair of the nationwide system of basic education is still a work in progress, China has ring-fenced and created a stream of excellence within the larger system in the best schools in urban areas, and in the most prosperous provinces.

Hence, the apparent paradox of high performance in global PISA learning tests along with retrogression in primary school enrolment.

It is a response with typically Chinese characteristics also seen in other fields. When improving the ease of doing business in the whole country was a challenge, the response was to create ring-fenced special areas with excellent conditions for business in the enormously successful export processing zones and special economic zones.

When fixing a state enterprise-dominated, inefficient industrial sector across the whole country became a problem, the response was to carve out selected enterprises in selected industries and nurture them to become globally competitive. The same approach has been adopted in education.

The ring-fenced supply chain of the most capable students has been established all the way from primary and secondary school education to graduate studies in colleges and universities. There is still a long way to go in raising the quality standards of Chinese higher education in general. But meanwhile, a specially supported subset of institutions has been carved out to produce graduates who achieve high standards of excellence.

A few universities are also being nurtured as world-class universities. This appears to be China’s strategy to become dominant in a knowledge-driven global economy.

Perhaps such special nurturing of selected entities, special economic zones, industrial units, education and research institutions is the only viable strategy available to China. An aspiring superpower that is still a developing country, it has to compete with countries with per capita income levels that are many times higher.

The strategy has already been enormously successful in achieving a dominant position for China in the global economy. It is now being applied to secure China’s pre-eminent position in a knowledge-based society of the future.

Within China, this strategy is leading to the emergence of a dualistic society in multiple dimensions. One consequence of such streaming of civil society, possibly unintended, is the bureaucratic discretion implicit in it and the consequent rise in corruption.

Such dualism is also a major source of rising inequality. Elite families are leaving the rest behind. More prosperous provinces are surging ahead of less prosperous ones. And the incomes of urban households is rising faster than those of peasant households in rural areas.

This is somewhat ironic in a country where the ruling communist party came to power on the basis of a peasant revolution some 70 years ago.

The guiding philosophy in Mao’s China, for all its excesses, appeared to be more egalitarian. In China, from the time of Deng, growth has trumped equity. But when a rising tide raises all boats, should it matter that some boats are rising higher than others? This is a question that has gained in importance the world over, over the past few years.

Achieving and sustaining China’s dominance in the global economy even if at the cost of equity at home seems to be the philosophy guiding the state in Asia’s emerging giant.

Sudipto Mundle is emeritus professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and was a member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission.

Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com

Source:

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/uhxxghgjkNlNgw2Wd1abzN/The-paradox-of-weakness-and-strength-in-Chinese-education.html

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Kenia: New system of education to be rolled out after training tutors

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Kenia / 13 de diciembre de 2017 / Por: KENNEDY KIMANTHI / Fuente: http://www.nation.co.ke/

All is set for the implementation of the 2-6-3-3 education system in January after the final induction of teachers.

It will be rolled out in the country’s 28,000 primary schools, according to Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development director Julius Jwan.

More than 160,000 teachers handling early years education — pre-primary 1 to 2 and grade 1 to 3 — in public and private schools will undergo the training.

In a statement to newsrooms on Sunday, Dr Jwan said the training would  focus on the competency-based curriculum, interpretation of the curriculum designs, special needs education and integration of ICT in teaching and learning.

IMPLEMENTATION

“We will induct teachers up to the closest time it can be to the implementation of the curriculum. If we decide to wait for another year, we shall just be going round in circles,” he said.

Piloting of the system started in 470 schools in May. The piloting took place in nursery, Standard One, Two and Three following the training of more than 1,888 teachers.

Five pre-primary and five primary schools from every county participated in the piloting, which took between eight and 10 weeks.

The first lot of 2,374 curriculum support officers, headteachers and teachers from the piloting schools were trained in two phases.

The officers were trained to interpret curriculum designs and how to develop schemes of work and lesson plans.

“They were taken through the basic education curriculum framework, which outlines the rationale for the reforms and the envisaged changes,” Dr Jwan added.

In the new education system, which stresses continuous assessment tests over summative evaluation, the number of subjects will be reduced to create room for identification and nurturing of talents, besides academic capabilities.

KEY SKILLS

It also seeks to equip learners with seven key skills: Communication and collaboration; self-efficacy; critical thinking and problem solving; creativity and imagination; citizenship; digital literacy; and learning to learn.

Kenya Primary Schools Heads Association chairman Shem Ndolo yesterday said the programme should be rolled out in stages.

“We do not want it to be like 8-4-4 system, which was started in totality only to turn up to be a fiasco, not because it was a bad thing, but because of the manner it was started,” he said.

KICD is also working with county governments to facilitate the training of Early Childhood Development Education teachers.

County directors of education in charge of ECDE met KICD representatives to strategise on how best the teachers who handle learners at formative age could be trained.

“We recognise ECDE is a devolved function. We have a duty to reach out to national and devolved governments and seal any loopholes that might derail this important exercise,” Dr Jwan said.

Fuente noticia: http://www.nation.co.ke/news/education/New-system-of-education-ready-to-be-rolled-out/2643604-4213404-6iuh43z/index.html

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