LEGAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE IQMS
4.7 Heneveld’s Taxonomy – enabling conditions and supporting inputs
Two if the most important groups of factors in providing a quality education have been identified as:
a) Supporting inputs that are required for a school to achieve its desired objectives and b) Enabling conditions for this to take place.
These factors will be explored in the following sections.
4.7.1 Effective Support from the Education System
Table 17 on the following page illustrates the types of support required from the system outside of the school in order for the education service delivery to be effective:
Chapter Four: Education and Economic Development 133
Table 17: Effective support from the education system (Heneveld:1996) Definition: Support to individual
schools by the education system is effective when:
Requirements Indicators
1. The system delegates authority and responsibility for improvement to the schools themselves.
1. Authority is delegated
a. The system has a clearly defined policy that delegates to the school the authority and responsibility for deciding school schedules, needed equipment and materials, schemes of work, and preferred teaching methods.
2. The system communicates expectations (exerts pressure) for successful academic results.
2. Communication of expectations
a. The system has set performance standards in terms of learner competencies.
b. The system has defined the criteria that determine a school's effectiveness.
c. Educational leaders above the school level, that is at circuit and district as well as at provincial level communicate frequently and publicly a goal of excellence for the school.
3. The system provides support services to the schools that assist them succeed.
3. Provision of services
a. School supervisors such as circuit and ward managers, subject advisors inform school staff of promising instructional practices and assist staff in trying them out.
b. The system provides continuing advice and training for school managers and teachers.
c. The system provides the resources needed to achieve instructional goals.
d. The system protects the school from political turbulence both internal and external.
4. The system monitors and evaluates schools' academic performances and their improvement efforts.
4. Monitoring and evaluation
a. School heads are evaluated regularly, focussing on their role as instructional managers. Quarterly reports are submitted from those doing the evaluation and follow-up action, if required is recorded.
b. The system assesses each school's academic performance and its change efforts on a quarterly basis, and both recognizes successes and provides support to overcome weaknesses.
Chapter Four: Education and Economic Development 134
Table 17 on the previous page illustrates the different support processes, vital to the efficient functioning of an educational system and embraces four major concepts:
- Delegation of authority
- Specifications and communication of expectations - Provision of support services
- Monitoring and evaluation
These process are all from the external source as opposed to the next important group of internal features contributing to a quality education – enabling factors as described in the following section.
4.7.2 Enabling Conditions: Effective Leadership
Possibly the most important factor in the successful functioning of an educational system within a school context is the quality of leadership at all levels as illustrated in Table 18 on the following page:
Chapter Four: Education and Economic Development 135
Table 18: Effective leadership; (Heneveld:1996)
Definition: Effective leadership exists in a school when:
Requirements Indicators
1. The Head and the school management team ensure that the resources are available to provide adequate support to teachers, sufficient learning materials, and an adequate and well-maintained learning facility.
1. Necessary resources are available
a. Teachers have adequate compensation in whatever form, to concentrate on teaching.
2. The Head and the school management team actively and the school management team pursues high instructional standards by:
a. The Head's and the school management team’s conversations and presentations regularly refer to confidence in student abilities and to learning.
a. clearly and frequently stating in concrete terms the school's mission, curricular goals and expected teaching behaviours.
b. The Head and the school management team can describe the school's curricular goals and the classroom behaviors that they believe constitute good teaching.
b. clearly and frequently expressing high expectations of pupils and the school's focus on learning as its central purpose.
c. There are minimal disruptions to learning time (e.g. administrative assemblies,long breaks, teacher tardiness etc.
c. coordinating and managing the learning process.
d. The Head and the school management team frequently visit classrooms and hold development conferences with teachers.
e. The Head and the school management team frequently review pupil
performance (by level, and by subject or learning area).
f. The Head and the school management team frequently review and assess teachers, and their curriculum programmes.
2. High instructional standards are pursued
a. Staff meetings are frequent and productive.
b. Communication with teachers is frequent and constructive.
c. School public events are frequent and productive.
3. The Head and the school management team communicate regularly and effectively with teachers, with parents and other stakeholders in the community.
3. Regular and effective communication with teachers, parents and the community
d. The Head's and the school management team involvement in community activities outside the school are frequent and constructive.
Chapter Four: Education and Economic Development 136
4.7.3 Enabling Conditions: A Capable Teaching Force
Although leadership is critical within an efficiently functioning school environment, without a capable teaching force, good leadership is largely ineffective as illustrated in Table 19 below:
Table 19: A capable teaching force (Heneveld:1996)
Definition: The teachers in a school are considered capable when:
Requirements Indicators
They have mastery of the material they are teaching (subject knowedge)
1. Knowledge a. All teachers have at least completed secondary school.
b. All teachers can demonstrate subject mastery on the material they teach, (e.g. they would receive a high score on a test based on the material they teach).
They have taught for a few years (experience) 2. Experience a. The majority of teachers have taught for more than one year.
The majority have taught together in the school for some time (stability)
3. Stability a. There is a low teacher turnover rate from year to year.
The majority are full time teachers who spend every school day working a complete teaching load
4. Full-time a. Most of the teachers are present at the school for the full school day and teach most of that time.
4.7.4 Supporting Inputs: Adequate Material Support
Without the proper teaching materials and equipment, teachers are not able to fully realize their potential and teaching ability. Table 20 on the following page specifies the types of material support which would be considered critical to effective teaching:
Chapter Four: Education and Economic Development 137
Table 20: Adequate support material : (Heneveld:1996) Definition: Material support for a school is
adequate for effectiveness when:
Requirements Indicators
1. Textbooks and other reading materials in an appropriate language with relevant contents are available in sufficient quantity for all learners to use them.
1. Textbooks and other reading material
a. All children can identify their textbook (even if shared) and accurately describe its contents.
b. All children can name other reading material, know where to find this and can name the last thing they read.
2. Teachers have guides that outline what to teach and how to teach it and that provide diagnostic and evaluation materials to use with students.
2. Teacher guides a. All teachers can show someone the Teachers Guide that they use and explain how they use it.
b. The Teachers Guide contains material on subject matter, how to teach it, and themethod of evaluation.
3. Students have sufficient paper and implements to adequately practice what is taught.
3. Paper and writing implements a. Children have with them a notebook (or notebook sections) for each subject and an effective implement with which to write.
4. The school has enough classrooms to accommodate classes of teachable size.
4. Classrooms a. All classrooms accommodate comfortably class sizes as per the government norms, to ensure that there are enough classrooms to accommodate all enrolled students for these class sizes.
5. Classrooms are equipped with blackboards and chalk, enough desks to seat all the learners, and visual aids that support instruction.
5. Classroom equipment a. There is a usable blackboard and sufficient chalk.
b. There are enough desk places so that all students enrolled in the class have a place to sit.
The stark reality is that if a survey of teachers in the Congo were to be compared with a survey done in Canada, Chile, China and Copenhagen what would the difference in responses be? An interesting study would be to ask teachers in Angola to complete the checklist and compare the results with those submitted by their Australian counterparts.
It would appear that the generic requirements which have been identified are the basic minimum requirements for effective teaching and learning to take place and are applicable to any teaching
Chapter Four: Education and Economic Development 138
situation in the world. These factors are however not the only requirements as one also has to take the relevance of the curriculum content into account.
Defining a good quality education proves to be more difficult than it appears. There are few who would disagree with the Dakar goals two and six under the Education for All (EFA) initiative which emphasize that universal education which is provided by governments should be of good quality.
The question which arises, however is what does quality education actually mean? Is there a universal understanding of the concept of good quality? Is the “quality” concept global in the sense that it should be understood in the same way everywhere in the world, that is, every country in the world?
Do those who live and teach in Cameroon or Chad have the same understanding of quality as those who live and teach in Canada? For example can an education system that lacks capacity and is not accessible to all learners claim to be an education system of high quality? If its capacity and outreach is limited and large groups of young people are denied access to any form of schooling, is it providing a quality education?
An attempt to find answers to these questions will be discussed in the following sections.