Worldwide Action in Education QUALITY OF EDUCATION AND IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT

1994 International Year of the Family

The Young Child and the Family Environment (YCF) Project

Management and the Flow of Information

Training School Principals

Monitoring School Outcomes

School Textbooks

1994 International Year of the Family

In the year 2000, the majority of illiterates will be children who have not completed their schooling. The quality of the education provided, even more than the fact of having access to education, is a decisive factor in the general introduction of programmes to provide education for all.

The Organization has always been very concerned that curricula should be relevant and that teachers should be qualified. The quality of education nevertheless depends just as much on the smooth day-to-day operation of the education system at all levels, and primarily at the level of the school itself. UNESCO is therefore exploring other means that could have a considerable impact on the improvement of school achievement including, among others, the provision of textbooks and teaching materials, the use of information for daily management, the training of head teachers in the techniques of educational and administrative management, and the development of measuring instruments making it possible to chart progress.

The Young Child and the Family Environment (YCF) Project Learning begins at birth. Early childhood care and education is the first and essential stage of the basic education process. Quality early childhood programmes have a positive and permanent influence on later schooling achievement and are a major entry point for women's education. The Young Child and the Family Environment (YCF) Project co-ordinates early childhood care and education research and activities undertaken by UNESCO. It seeks to prepare children for school and schools for children, and to make appropriate inputs into family and women's education.

Management and the Flow of Information

A priority in many initiatives to improve the quality and efficiency of education is the increased use of information in policy formulation and planning. Only as the dimensions of an education system and the problems that beset it are clearly understood can appropriate planning and management of the education system occur. A considerable amount of attention and resources has been devoted to the design and implementation of Education Information Systems as a means of providing decision-makers with more accurate, relevant, and timely information.

However, the increased ability to collect and analyze information has not necessarily led to improved educational practice (directly or indirectly) at the levels where it matters most - in the schools and classrooms where the real process of education occurs. While considerable creative thought has been put into the design and operation of information systems for central ministry planning, far less has been given to ways in which the resulting information can be used to actually affect practice at the school level. This represents a major challenge in educational planning and is the principal thrust of a research topic completed in 1993 by the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP).

The research findings identify and synthesize lessons learned from current practice on the use of information systems to improve educational practice, particularly in ways that result in improved educational quality and efficiency. The findings place emphasis on the human factors and non-monetary incentives that operate to encourage and sustain the utilization of information. Agendas for further research and training are proposed as a framework that officials within each country can use to evaluate the needs of their own information systems.

Training School Principals

Of the factors which have the greatest influence on pupils' performance, it is not the size of classes or even teachers' qualifications that come first, but the way in which the school is run - the educational and administrative management style. The place above all where the different measures designed to improve the quality of education are linked together in an orderly way is the school and no longer the classroom. This is why in some countries, the target for reform strategies is the place where education occurs and not the pupils, teachers, curricula or the education system as a whole.

The role of the head of a school is of prime importance. Each school is an enterprise whose director must manage available resources in the best possible way, seeing to the organization of teaching in the school, the distribution of pupils, teachers and premises, timetable management, and so on. Training in educational and administrative management has become a key element in improving school achievement. Thus UNESCO, in co-operation with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Agency for Cultural and Technical Co-operation, has launched a regional project for the further training of school principals in Africa. This project has components for the English-, French- and Portuguese-speaking countries, with specific material such as the guide to administrative and educational management of schools. As the project is proving successful, other countries such as Brazil have launched similar activities.

Monitoring School Outcomes

Investment in the quality of education necessarily calls for the development of educational research and of measuring instruments in particular. In that connection, UNESCO and UNICEF have launched a joint project to devise, in co-operation with researchers and decision-makers in the countries concerned, a set of readily measurable and internationally accepted indicators which will make it possible to evaluate the principal objectives of education for all.

These indicators will provide decision-makers with up-to-date data, so that they can measure progress and identify the most serious shortfalls in reaching the new objectives of basic education. The indicators are concerned primarily with pupils' attainments in reading, writing, arithmetic and the skills required for daily life, and with the factors conducive to attainment. These factors include the characteristics of both pupils and teachers and the specific features of the family and school environment.

School Textbooks

In the developing regions of the world, many students do not have textbooks with which to work. In classes without books, there is no alternative but to learn things by heart or recite passages written out on the blackboard. The provision of textbooks is an effective way of improving results and whether or not pupils have textbooks is one of the criteria by which the quality of education can be judged.

The greater the shortage of textbooks, the more necessary it becomes for governments to take action. The problem of providing textbooks is one that has to be taken up at the top-most level by policy-makers and planners and not handled or, as is all to often the case, overlooked as a detail of implementation. Ensuring access to textbooks is essential to the success of education. Their design, production, distribution and use involve complex processes offering a wide range of choice and participation of partners from far outside the education system proper. UNESCO's experience over the years underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to textbook production. As one step towards this end, the IIEP has recently produced a series of twelve modules to enable educational planners to gain an understanding of the processes involved in the development of school textbooks in order that they may be able to lend more effective support to book professionals. UNESCO is also continuing to produce and circulate documents on the technical aspects of textbook production and distribution that are the outcome of the experience gained on country projects. The Organization is also giving its support to the building up of national capabilities in publishing and the graphics arts.