The 2018/19 school year has just finished or is soon to finish in all of our geographies. This article provides a review of how we are doing in relation to our 5-year progress pathway, shares learning from the year and lays out the priorities for the new school year. It is based on analysis of our internal data as well as learning from the Funder Partner Strategy Group that took place in Uganda in February.
Overall, we’ve taken five key messages from the past year:
1. We have strong relationships with governments and growing commitment to intrinsic motivation but, overall, we still have lots of work to do to create genuine ‘system learning partnerships’.
We have established strong relationships and commitment to a long-term partnership in all geographies and the case for focusing on intrinsic motivation is increasingly well understood and received by government partners. A common language is developing amongst teachers, headteachers, and district and national officials around the importance of intrinsic motivation and, increasingly, we are starting to see district leaders assuming ownership of the work.
To move forward, however, we need to change the nature of the partnerships we have with our national and district government partners. Although we have strong relationships and a good level of trust, there is still a need to move beyond the normal government expectation that NGOs will just tell them what is happening to a genuine learning partnership. The need for this is greatest in Uganda, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
“What strikes me about this programme is that it is re-igniting intrinsic motivation in teachers. This means that it was there but has somehow faded away. This programme is helping us re-build good customer care. I see ourselves moving towards improved performance”.
Mr. Aisu Noel, Principal, Gulu Core Primary Teachers’ College, Uganda.
PRIORITY ACTIONS:
- Strengthen relationships with the highest-level officials (Permanent Secretary/ Director level) in each government.
- Establish more regular national-level progress meetings with the most senior officials, focused on highlighting our contribution to national/ state priorities.
2. The core STiR activities are being implemented quite consistently across all geographies, but there is a lot of work to do to truly embed in government routines.
The core STiR activities (district alignment meetings, training and coaching for district officials, teacher network meetings) are consistently being delivered as we expect them to be. This level of implementation is however largely due to the efforts of our District Leads. At the moment, if the STiR team was to exit, we would not feel confident that the activities have been fully embedded into national or district plans and budgets. The overarching focus of Year 2 is to establish routines and rhythms within government structures.
In Tamil Nadu, 100% of teacher network meetings have been implemented this year but this is largely due to the support of a few innovative officials. To really lock the programme into state plans, we need to influence how the teacher professional development budget is allocated. We are working on this now.
PRIORITY ACTIONS:
- Make the case for sustained (rather than ‘one-off’) professional development for teachers and officials.
- Ensure activities are fully embedded into annual district implementation plans.
- Develop more detailed understanding of national, state and district level budgets as a step towards ensuring there is sustainable funding available for the programme.
3. The quality of programme delivery is currently roughly where we expect it to be, but more specific developmental support to district officials is needed.
Overall, the quality of our programme delivery is as we would expect in relation to the progress pathway . We are very aware, though, that improving quality is going to require significant energy, especially as ‘improvement cultures’ do not typically exist in government systems. We are currently working hard to get national and district partners to focus as much on quality indicators as they do on whether or not activities are happening, and to adjust plans according to data. Internally, we are working hard to develop capacity of the team to be able to identify specific areas of improvement within their districts.
In Uttar Pradesh, teachers strongly value feedback from and interaction with their supporting district officials. However, only 25% of the officials we surveyed were able to conduct classroom observations, citing administrative duties (distributing books, voter registration, attendance tracking) as the main barrier. In two districts, we have supported the leadership to create roles in the system focused much more on supporting teachers.
PRIORITY ACTIONS:
- Increase the quality of district alignment meetings. These termly meetings provide an opportunity for teachers, headteachers, officials and STiR team members to look at progress and plan action for improvement together. When working well, they provide clear collective purpose and clarity of action that we believe will drive a lot of other improvement.
- Ensure officials have the time (and expectation) to focus on supporting headteacher and teacher development and clear plans to do so. District officials are often significantly over-stretched and lack clear priorities. This leads to them being pulled in multiple directions and unable to provide coherent development to those they support. One official told us there are nearly 30 NGOs working in their district, many of whom are vying for district officials’ time.
- Develop the capacity of officials to provide high quality support to teachers and headteachers through lots of deliberate practice and feedback sessions. The quality of the coaching and development meetings that our District Leads provide to their district officials requires work. We are currently updating the structure we suggest for coaching meetings and providing additional training and support for our team to be able to lead training institutes designed to enable high quality practice.
4. We are starting to see change in teachers’ classroom practice, but we have a long way to go to establish a culture of collaborative development and ongoing improvement in schools.
Based on classroom observations carried out by District Leads, the number of teachers trying out new practices is encouraging relative to our expectations. We are aware, however, that there is a high chance that teachers ‘perform’ for our team members when they visit. There is still a lot to do to change teacher habits and ensure they have the regular feedback and development that will allow them to implement increasingly effectively.
In Delhi, we are starting to see a real shift in the number of teachers benefiting from peer observation, and there is an opportunity for the STiR observation and feedback structure to be formally adopted by the state government. We hope to create similar opportunities in other geographies in the coming year.
PRIORITY ACTION:
- Build regular peer-to-peer developmental classroom observation into teachers’ routines to change teacher practice. This requires a significant cultural shift and change in understanding of what observation is for; we are pushing for it to be seen as developmental, rather than as a monitoring activity. We are now actively supporting officials and headteachers to plan observation schedules for their teachers as part of training institutes.
5. For longer-term system change, we need to develop a sustainability blueprint (including STiR’s exit strategy) with senior government officials.
We need to better communicate to government partners the idea that STiR will not continue to operate in districts indefinitely, and that we are not able (nor do we want) to expand the size of our team to reach all districts. One of the most significant pieces of learning from the FPSG meeting in Uganda was the need to start the work of ‘exiting’ now and plan more comprehensively for ownership to be taken by the government in full.
PRIORITY ACTION:
- Further develop the progress pathway to be clear how all elements of our model will run after our initial 5-year partnership. This includes considering the funding model (especially important for Uganda, although also significant for India in terms of flow of funds if not overall provision); the leadership of the work within districts (especially the training and support for district officials); the gathering and analysis of data about intrinsic motivation; and the design of new ‘modules’ and development of innovation so as to keep the model fresh and relevant.
Overall, we are happy with our progress this year: we are increasingly ’embedded’ into government systems and working hard at strengthening our relationships at state and district level. We know, however, that the next step is the really hard bit – continuing to build a culture of feedback and improvement across the systems. Onwards and upwards!