Equitable Quality Education: Chinese Experiences from Southwest Basic Education Project (SBEP) April 5, 2012 SAFED

Presentation structure Education inequality issues in China Government strategies and SBEP Show 10 minutes video Main actions in improving student achievements Conclusions and observations/questions

Education Inequality: from Access to Quality Big challenges in basic education inequality in term of quality: reflected by the issue with higher education (in term of less access but more quality) Poor teaching quality in rural schools (the shortage of qualified teachers in rural areas)

Teacher education and training in China Higher qualifications requirements for being a teacher in China More teachers trainings in rural areas: compulsory credits

Challenge: the education inequality is still enlarging Reasons: many but one is that the teacher training system in rural areas not working very well (poor quality, relevance, and inequitable distribution of the training chances) SBEP: upgrading the government system

SBEP Background Overall project value: £23,358,070 pounds Funding source: Department for International Development, UK Start/end date: 25 April 2005 – 31 March 2011 Ministry of Education of China: support four provinces in southwest China No hardware: capacity building and institutional development

Purpose and Targets “To support the Government of China to achieve its goals in basic education, by increasing Government capacity to improve effective programmes that increase equitable access, completion and achievement for the most excluded boys and girls.”

SBEP: what and how Show 10 minutes video Click to play video

Outcomes (84% achieved according to DFID) Output One: Improved equitable access for disadvantaged children, especially junior middle school girls, to Nine Year Compulsory Education (scored 1 by DFID); Output Two: Improved teaching and learning outcomes through strengthened capacity of teacher development systems to reach the most disadvantaged girls and boys (scored 2); Output Three: Improved systems of school management that promote the interests of the most disadvantaged girls and boys (scored 2); Output Four: Improved capacity of monitoring and evaluation systems to orient policy and practice in favor of the most disadvantaged girls and boys (scored 2); Output Five: Improved capacity to the education system to better meet the needs of the most disadvantaged girls and boys (scored 2).

SBEP: monitoring and evaluation arrangement To track the changes and impacts from SBEP, the project established sound M/E structure: SES as the core concept Baseline studies (2006): quantitative survey (students, teachers, schools), qualitative study (a few cases for deep and thorough analysis), and students achievement study (standard tests) End of project studies (2010): repetition of baseline studies

Classroom teaching behaviour before SBEP Traditional Chinese way and saying: by repeating same sentence 1000 times, the meaning will be exposed automatically! Data from quantitative study: at baseline, nearly 90% of the time was spent in whole class teaching, meaning that for only 4 minutes per lesson on average were students organised in groups or pairs, or for individual work, both of which are prime indicators of learner centred activity. Big difference between students from different SES

Changes after SBEP During the course of the project, there was a steady decline in the proportion of time devoted to teaching students as a whole class and a rise in the other categories of classroom organisation. By the end of the project, the time spent on group work and for children working as individuals had risen to 14 minutes per lesson on average. EOP students achievement study shows that SES does not play negative impacts anymore.

Interventions to change the teaching practice to be more student centred Teachers training: training needs analysis, chosen of the most relevant topics, development of training modules, start from the poorest townships, all teachers at same time, multiple trainings with different topics (student centred teaching techniques) Teaching support system: school based, support from the county level, incentives (competitions, rewards) and inspection

Conclusions and observations Sound teacher training and support system could make improvement of student achievements More stronger provincial and county technical capacity in teacher training and support Policy choice to sustain the SBEP benefits: better implementation of the current available policies!

Questions Black box: which actions and interventions (more than 50) played most critical role in making changes? Are there really changes from SBEP’s intervention only: DID?