Teaching Quality Improvement Project and PACE

Teaching Quality Improvement Project and PACE Work collaboratively
To bring a meaningful change in the secondary education in Bangladesh BRAC Secondary Education Program has been working with the government since 2001 and it started full fledged teacher training in three important subjects namely English, Mathematics and Science along with management training for head and assistant head teachers and members of School Management Committee from 2003. Teacher training is one of most important components of BRAC Secondary Education Program which is popularly known as Post Primary basic And Continuing Program in brief PACE Program. Only one sided or two sided approaches or endeavors cannot bring real change in this sector. Teacher training is a must to bring change in this sector which received utmost importance from PACE Program along with the government Project named Teaching Quality Improvement. The success and positive impact of BRAC training has invited the attention of the government and it has shown keen interest in extending further cooperation with BRAC and making more scope for BRAC.
Teaching Quality Improvement project’s goal matches with BRAC’S secondary education program. Both put emphasis on the quality of education in Bangladesh secondary school. TQI’s purpose is to provide quality in-service teacher training, including professional development opportunities that will improve classroom practice. Its overall objective is to offer integrated teacher education system. Training is an essential element of TQI project just like PACE Program. Extensive training and professional development activities are underway and will continue for the duration of the project. Participants include aspiring and in-service teachers, head teachers and members of School Management Committees showing the closest parallelism between TQI and PACE functionaries. Creating learner-friendly, secure and amenable learning environments is important to enable effective learning. This is why TQI is giving attention to physical access for disabled students, being sensitive to the needs of girl-children and female teaches and ensuring all students are proved an equitable education regardless of location, ethnicity or gender which PACE Program also shares .
In this era of globalization, education should prepare students with capacity to compete globally and ICT has been offering a good opportunity towards that end. Teaching method in our schools is mostly direct where teachers lecture and students listen in a passive manner. Teaching with the help of ICT provides scope for following interactive teaching method which tends to increase attentiveness of students in class. PACE Program wants to hold the interest of the students in the class by interactive and colorful teaching aids. It has developed Computer Aided Learning which has developed animations based on the national curriculum of English for grades nine and ten and Mathematics for grades six to ten, are available in CDs-the use of which are fold: as supplementary teaching learning resources and as students practice materials. The materials focus on enhancing students’ interest by presenting colorful animation and audio as well as interaction through visualization of events and problem solving activities. Student’s motivation is ensured as ample activities are provided for students’ engagement. More specifically Mathematics materials aim to develop students’ basic concepts and problem solving skills while English materials emphasize developing all four language skills namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. The contents in the CDs are used as teaching-learning materials in the classroom equipped with computers for the teacher and pupils. In the classroom teachers traditionally rely on direct teaching method where they mostly do the talking and pupils passively listen to them which hardly generate any interest among the students. They don’t feel any attraction to come to the class contributing to remaining very much irregular in the class and teachers also fail to retain the interest of the students. CAL materials promises the teachers to change their teaching approaches to a more attentive and more interactive one. Teachers have the option to familiarize the students with animated characters in the materials. Certain events have been animated to show the real life situation which teachers find useful while explaining problems. The colorful pictures of real life examples add to teacher’s advantage.
TQI has developed close cooperation with PACE through providing moral, financial and instrumental support to BRAC supported schools where BRAC launched innovative approaches to learning and mentioning activities. In each TQI supported school where CAL is in operation is given one computer with seven additional monitors. Each monitor can be used by seven students. One computer table is provided for the teacher which was bought from Dhaka and the tables for the students are bought locally. For backup for two hours each computer is given UPS. All these physical facilities have been ensured by TQI project and most credit goes to Md. Nazrul Islam, Project Director as the representative of the government.
A total of five teachers, three of Mathematics and two of English from each project school is provided twelve days training on fundamentals of ICT at BRAC Training and Resource Centers. With this twelve day ICT training, the teachers receive another 3-day training on how to use Computer Aided Learning materials in the classroom. In total prior to the commencement of each term, the subject teachers receive a one -day orientation on the CAL materials of the respective term. The students’ monitor is connected with the computer of the teacher with a splitter. Mathematics and English classes are held six days a week. Class duration is forty minutes i.e. within the usual routine of the school. There remain three schools in each project jointly ventured by TQI and PACE. At present two projects are running jointly meaning six schools located at Chaddagram, Comilla and another three Gazipur Sadar. The schools are Amandanga High School, Batisha and Dharmapur high school at Chaddagram. BMTF, Bhabanipur and Mofziuddin high schools are at Gazipur Sadar. TQI has also financed for starting another three projects in Gopalgonj, Bogra and Hobigonj in close collaboration with PACE. For launching mentoring activities Moulivibazar and Rajshahi have been selected and in each project there will be five schools. This encouraging cooperation of TQI and its active participation offer to bring potential changes in the schools.
Actually it is the encouragement from the government which led BRAC to launch mentoring activities in the selected schools since 2005 to develop the leadership quality of the students. Why this initiative. Teachers receive training for developing the students but students’ presence in the class registers irregular. Hence, most of the efforts may go in vain. Keeping this thing in mind BRAC started mentoring activities so that pupils can be made responsible, sincere and bloom their latent talents. Some visionary changes have come to the schools in which these activities go on. It has caught the attention of the government project Teaching Quality Improvement which has extended its cooperative hands and now vouched to work hand in hand with Brac.
After receiving six days mentoring training in BRAC Training Centers, students go back to their schools and form several groups to share their schooling problems. Students learn how to prepare for debate competition, prepare wall magazine which helps bloom their creative facilities. Mentoring schools have experienced the enhanced number of presence in the classroom. Teachers have to put fewer endeavors to bring the students into the classroom. On the other hand, dependence on private tutors has also lessened as they share academic problems as well in groups which are formed of weak and bright pupils proportionately. So far 36967 students of 1290 schools have received mentoring training from BRAC. Now TQI has volunteered to offer financial support to continue further the mentoring activities in schools so that students can really get the interest of coming to school and make school a really learning centre. The schools with CAL and mentoring support seem to be exciting enough to impart learning in a different environment. Both TQI and PACE work tirelessly to show a really a meaningful difference in these schools in respect of academic and co-curricular activities. Government and non-government partnership can really bring potential changes in the field of education which TQI and PACE joint venture has initiated to prove. Let us hope for the best.


Md. Masum Billah
Programme Manager: BRAC Education Programme, PACE
Phone: 9355253 (home), 01714-091431 (cell)
Email: mmbillah2000@yahoo.com, mmbillah@dhaka.net