Institutional Development

Submitted By: Warda Ahmed

Submitted To: Ma’am Afshan Huma

Roll No: CF503549

Program: PGD (ELM)

Semester: Spring 2021

Course Code: 1648

Assignment 1
Department of Educational Planning, Policy Studies and Leadership

ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD

 Assignment No.1

Q. 1 How Can A School Development Plan Be Constructed And Implemented? Provide

Detailed Lay Out?

Answer:

The first step we described was establishing a strategic plan. This is by far the most important
element, because without a clear plan to guide your improvement efforts, success is nearly
impossible to attain.

At School Improvement Network, we’ve helped more than 20,000 schools worldwide achieve
measurable improvement, and we’ve had the opportunity to observe what works and what
doesn’t when it comes to establishing a plan. Based on our experiences, here are five key
elements of an effective school improvement plan.

1. Start with a vision

What should your vision for improvement look like? This will be different for every school or
district, but you’ll need to establish a common definition that will guide your improvement
efforts. In other words, what are you looking to achieve—and how will you define success?

2. Conduct a needs assessment

To get from point A to point B, you have to know not only where you’re going, but also where
you’re starting from. That requires an honest assessment of your current practices and
results.

Begin with a comprehensive needs assessment that accurately gauges your strengths,
weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Tools that can help you assess your needs include
student achievement data, classroom walkthrough information, and surveys of students,
parents, teachers, and administrators.

Don’t be afraid to confront hard realities. Sound decision making relies on having a clear
picture of the facts. In his bestselling book series: Good to Great, Great by Choice, and Built
to Last, Jim Collins and his research team studied the core success principles of the greatest
high-growth companies in the country. They found these organizations infused their entire
planning process with “the brutal facts of reality.” As Collins put it, when you “start with an
honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of the situation, the right decisions often
become self-evident.”

3. Identify goals and objectives

Once you have a clear sense of where you are now, you can begin mapping out a strategy for
progressing to where you want to be. Your plan should include concise, measurable, and
achievable goals and objectives that will lead you on the path to success.

For example, suppose your needs assessment determines that some students are struggling
because they are bored, frustrated, or overwhelmed with the pace of instruction. You also
discover that many students are failing to see the relevance of what they are learning.

To address these problems, you might establish the following goals: (1) implement more
personalized learning to meet every student at an appropriate level of instruction; (2) connect
what students are learning to authentic, real-world tasks; and (3) use a variety of formative
assessment strategies to verify students’ understanding before advancing to a new topic.

Limiting your objectives can yield better results, faster. Because time and resources are
always limited, the best course of action is to focus on the most important goals, the ones
that are going to make the largest impact. This point has been echoed by numerous
researchers.

“The common pattern in schools is for leaders to implement multiple new initiatives in an
attempt to address a broad range of problems. In trying to solve everything at once, nothing
gets the attention it really needs, and ultimately nothing gets solved,” wrote Trent Kaufman,
Emily Grimm, and Allison Miller in their book Collaborative School Improvement.

4. Outline specific action steps

One of the most common roadblocks that repeatedly prevents districts from achieving
success is that their plan is not actionable.

A strong vision and a list of goals and objectives is not enough. You also need to outline what
you will do to achieve those goals. Without specific action steps to guide your progress, your
plan will falter.

Successful school districts map out strategies for every employee, making sure each person
understands his or her role in fulfilling the plan.
5. Involve all stakeholders in the process

Research shows that strategies developed collaboratively become more widely supported
and adopted—and that the most effective leaders know how to listen to their constituents.

According to Collins, the most successful organizations “create a culture wherein people have
a tremendous opportunity to be heard.” He observes that great leadership “means having the
humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers—and
then to ask questions that will lead to the best possible insights.”

Develop a process that involves all stakeholders—teachers, administrators, students, parents,

and community leaders—in establishing a vision, setting goals, and outlining action steps.
Solicit feedback throughout the process, and listen to what your stakeholders have to say.

Q. 2 Explain In Detail Different Institutional Reforms Of Pakistan?

Answer:

How can institutions in Pakistan be reformed? This working paper from the Pakistan Institute
of Development Economics analyses the current literature on institutional change. For
institutional change to happen, cultural belief systems must be shaped in a way that provokes
a shift in the institutional power structure. Given the current institutional framework and
social situation in Pakistan, institutional reform should focus on changing cultural belief
systems through education policy reform.

According to Douglass North, institutions are “humanly devised constraints that shape human
interaction”. They can take the form of either formal rules and organisations, or informal
behavioural norms. While all societies have institutions, the relevant question is how certain
societies develop the sort of institutions that promote economic growth and social
development.
One of the major issues in the study of institutional development is the problem of
endogeneity. This means that elites with de jure power benefit from a certain institutional
arrangement, and therefore have no reason to develop better institutions. Additionally, social
beliefs are significant in that they define society’s ability to question, participate in and reform
the current set of institutions.

Historical examples prove that successful institutional reform results when citizens with de
facto power are able to influence the elites who rule by de jure power. For lasting results, this
must be done gradually. According to history, de facto power can overcome de jure power
where:

▪ Fiscal constraints and commercial interests require good institutions

▪ Elites do not benefit from poor institutions through rent-seeking behaviour or where
they stand to benefit from institutional reforms

▪ There is serious threat of a revolution or ideological reform

▪ World powers do not provide aid or support to rent-seeking rulers

▪ There is political stability

Pakistan’s social belief system needs to become more conducive to supporting institutional
change; for a society to agree on an institutional change, belief convergence within that
society is essential. For this to happen, Pakistan’s present heterogeneous educational system
should be replaced with a single educational system for all up to a certain grade. The rationale
is that different readings foster different beliefs. Reforms in Pakistan should therefore focus
on the educational system as a method of changing beliefs in order to better balance de
jure power and de facto power. Educational reform should be supported because it:

▪ Shapes the beliefs of those in a position to enact institutional change in the future.

▪ Does not threaten the immediate future of elites, which means that it will be less likely
to meet resistance than more overt policies.

▪ Forms consensus by bringing the interests of the elites and other citizens in line, which
will make change long lasting.

▪ Increases the ability of the citizenry to comprehend the effects of bad institutions and
demand the creation of more beneficial institutions.
After nearly three decades of strong performance in terms of economic growth, Pakistan’s
economy has floundered since the 1990s. The country’s economic performance has
deteriorated both with regards to its own historical trend as well as when benchmarked
against developing country peers. The deterioration is structural and not cyclical, manifesting
itself across a wide front and has persisted for a protracted period. The weak secular
performance of the economy has occurred in a context of a broad atrophy of the country’s
institutional framework. Is there a correlation or, indeed, even causality between the two
developments? The corpus of growth literature on Pakistan has largely ignored to study the
country’s historical economic performance, in particular the period of decline from the early
1990s, through an institutional prism. This paper attempts to do that, with the caveat that it
should be regarded as a preliminary issues paper, laying out the landscape and providing a
broad examination of the issues. The study does, however, hint at possible solutions and
approaches to institutional reform, in particular relating to institutions of economic
governance, and the way forward.

Pakistan’s institutional performance till the 1990s was, on the whole, fairly impressive. While
the country’s path to constitutional democracy may have been fraught with challenges, in an
administrative and functional sense, the institutional framework was delivering. The quality
of the country’s civil service, and its ability to maintain independent judgement was
impressive and performance across a range of economic as well as social indicators was
above-par when compared to many developing countries. However, since the start of the
1990s, prima facie the institutional framework has progressively frayed, barring a period of a
few years in the early 2000s. The reasons are explored in a later section. However, some
dimensions of the weakening of the overall institutional set-up, among many (some of which
have also been covered in detail later), are as follows:

Tax collection: With barely one million income tax flers in a population of 200 million, tax
revenue of the government (federal as well as provincial) amounts to less than 11 per cent of
the GDP. Tellingly, personal income tax collection is less than 1.5 per cent of the GDP, amongst
the lowest in the world.

Educational attainment: An estimated 25 million school-age children are out of school in

Pakistan — one of the highest proportions of relevant cohort in the world. The country’s
education budget amounts to a paltry 2 per cent of the GDP, much of which is either absorbed
by salaries or is subjected to mis-appropriation. In addition, poor institutional arrangements
in some provinces lead to widespread cheating and exam paper “leakages” in national board-
level exams. The combined effect is that overall educational outcomes and attainment are
poor.

Health sector outcomes: Pakistan’s total spending on the health sector amounts to an
abysmal 0.7 per cent of the GDP, or the equivalent of just US$ 10.6 per capita per annum. As
a result, many of the country’s health statistics do not compare favorably with its income
cohort.

Civil service quality: The low spending on education and poor educational attainment for the
country as a whole has begun to be refected even in the results of the most competitive
examination held — the annual Central Superior Services (CSS) exams to select candidates for
recruitment into the civil service. Progressively, fewer candidates across the country are able
to make the mark, with only 202 candidates out of 9,643, appearing in 2016, able to pass
(over 90 per cent failed to pass the English exam).

State of the judicial system: With only 3,967 judges in the entire judicial system (in all tiers
of courts) for a population of 200 million people, there is 1 judge for over 50,000 citizens.
There are over 1.7 million cases pending in the courts, many awaiting judgement for years, if
not decades.

Resource management: Poor utilisation of Pakistan’s considerable economic potential and

endowment of natural resources is underscored by the state of affairs in the energy sector
and the management of the country’s considerable water resources.

Implementation:

Another area where weak institutional capacity manifests itself is in the inability to complete
“transformation” initiatives (such as modernisation of the economy/ diversifcation of exports,
creating the basis for a knowledgedriven economy, etc.), or in the number of years for
nationally-important, “strategic” initiatives (increasing the share of renewable energy in the
overall mix, for example) to reach fruition. Three examples demonstrate this.

• Pakistan established the Alternative Energy Board (AEB) in 2007 to facilitate the promotion
of renewable energy generation. It has taken 10 years for the frst solar and wind power plants
to be set up (attributed mainly to lack of capacity to set tariffs for renewable projects). Ten
years on, the share of renewables in the total energy mix is a meagre 1.7 per cent. In India,
the share has gone up to 17.5 per cent in roughly the same time period, with plans to raise it
to 40 per cent by 2030.

• The Pakistan Horticulture Development and Export Board (PHDEB) was set up in 2003 to
promote exports from this avenue. In fourteen years since it has been set up, horticulture
exports have moved from US$ 175 million to an estimated US$ 641 million (2015-16). Kenya’s
fresh produce exports, on the other hand, have touched US$ 1 billion in around the same
period from virtually zero, with exports of freshcut fowers capturing roughly 30% of world
market share.

• To promote the use of the public-private partnership (PPP) model in infrastructure

development after a successful experience with Independent Power Producers in the 1990s,
an Infrastructure Project Development Facility (IPDF) was set up in the mid-2000s under the
Ministry of Finance. However, till date, virtually no major infrastructure project outside power
has been successfully undertaken in the PPP mode (barring the Hyderabad-Mirpurkhas
highway section). In India, which gave an impetus to infrastructure development under PPP
at around the same time as Pakistan (the mid2000s), over 800 major projects have been
undertaken, according to the World Bank with an estimated combined project cost of US$ 60-
80 billion.

Q. 3 Visit At Least Two Schools (One Government Sector And One Private Sector) And
Make Action Plan For School Development?

Answer:

All schools have to prepare an action plan following a Section 10 inspection. An inspection
will identify the school’s strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses must be addressed if the
school is to improve the quality of education it provides for its pupils. The main areas that
need to be improved are organised in the inspection report under the heading “what the
school should do to improve further?” These are the key issues for action. The action plan
sets out how the school will address these issues. 2. This document replaces guidance
previously issued about writing an action plan.. Schools requiring special measures and those
with serious weaknesses have also received guidance in OFSTED publications: ‘From Failure
to Success’ and ‘Lessons learned from special measures’. DfEE Circular 6/99, ‘Schools Causing
Concern’, details what is needed in action plans and tells LEAs what their statements of action
and commentaries should contain. (See Appendix A: Useful publications).

Preparing an action plan

Producing an effective action plan which gives a clear agenda for a school’s improvement is a
key factor in determining the school’s rate of progress.

In ‘Lessons learned from special measures’ some guiding principles are given. These are:
check each key issue against its main finding and report section;

• be honest about the school’s present capabilities and its capacity to move ahead by
itself and/or with external support;

• use staff expertise in a realistic way, drawing on strengths and acknowledging

shortcomings;

• assign responsibilities for ensuring action takes place;

• assess the resources required;

• set realistic timescales;

• be clear about how progress will be assessed;

• make sure that the action plan is fully implemented.

It is crucial that an action plan is a useful concise and effective management tool that guides
the school in bringing about improvement, providing an agenda, a timetable and a check list.

Some priorities

The most successful action plans are likely to concentrate on improving:

• the leadership provided by the head teacher and key staff, including governors, with
particular emphasis on their strategies for raising standards;

• levels of attainment and the rate of pupils’ progress;

 • management, including pastoral care of pupils/staff, communication, financial
planning, control and administration;

• systems to monitor and evaluate the school’s performance;

• the pupils’ behaviour, attitudes and work habits;

• the planning and organisation of lessons;

• the challenge and pace of teaching;

• the quality and range of opportunities for learning, including the development of
policies, schemes of work, curricular planning, and assessment, recording and
reporting;

• resources to address the above

Q. 4 How Community And School Can Be Linked In A Productive Way?

Answer:

As the old African proverb says, "It takes a village to raise a child." One could imagine then
that it would take a community to raise a school. We can't rely on local, state, or federal
governments to take ownership of the issues we face locally. We need to work as a
community to nurture our schools for our particular community needs. I believe the answer
to real education/school transformation is strong, authentic community connections and
actions. When families, community groups, business and schools band together to support
learning, young people achieve more in school, stay in school longer, and enjoy the
experience more.

Great examples of school/community partnerships are happening all over the world. We need
more of them, and we need to ensure they are healthy and relevant to the needs of 21st
century learners.

Throughout my journey setting up the Reinventing School Challenge, I did a significant

amount of research to ensure I had a thorough understanding of what existed already, what
worked, and what was possible. The more I searched, the themes for successful school
transformation emerged:

• Community/business school partnerships

• Parental collaboration

• Curriculum connected to real world experiences

• Student voice

• Cross generation learning

• Locals designing solutions to local problems

Whole Community Engagement Is Key

To lift up and raise our schools to a place that suits all 21st century learners, help needs to
come from many parts of the community. The leading roles should be alternated according
to the need and focus of the particular aspect of the transformation project.

If we respect each other and acknowledge our unique contribution, we can move forward
quickly in a positive environment where we can all be teachers and learners.

I'm approaching this post from an inclusive, design-focused view, and I put to you ideas that
target and engage the four main players I believe can make all the difference in transforming
our schools and curriculum today: students, parents, seniors/grandparents and local
businesses.

Step 1: Expand Your Vision of School to Include Community

Ryan Bretag writes, "Educators shouldn't be the only ones contributing. The community
should be creating questions, puzzles, quotes, mind benders, trivia, philosophical and ethical
challenges, thought provoking videos, "graffiti walls," brainstorming spaces, and play areas."

There are so many opportunities for experiential learning to happen out in the community
surrounding the school. We just need to find ways to connect core curriculum beyond the
classroom by attracting the right people and asking the right questions.

Step 2: Reach Out to All Stakeholders

One of the best ways to connect and create an authentic bond is to go to the people who
matter most, and meet them on their own turf. A series of community walks are a great way
to start.

Get your teachers, some local businesses on board and go and knock on people's doors, visit
local businesses and senior homes and talk with them. Try the same approach with groups of
students. This time let the students communicate what they hope and wish for their school
and encourage them to ask for mentoring and support.

Share your dreams for enhanced community-school partnerships, ask people what matters
to them, ask them how they might help, and show them your passion. Deliver them an open
invitation to reconnect, collaborate and share their experience, skills and time to make a
difference.

Step 3: Create a Community Resource Map

A visual representation of your community and the various skills people have to offer is a
super way to understand what community resources are available. If you build one, also point
out the materials people can supply at cost or for free, the time they can invest in projects,
and how they can connect to curriculum, and classroom activities. Include the networks they
can utilize to raise awareness of the needs of local children and families, and always promote
and foster resource-sharing and collaboration.

Use libraries to advocate for school-community partnerships and student learning. Libraries
are important hubs and can provide meaningful connection points outside the school gates.

A community resource map can come in the form of a hand-drawn map (use a graphic
facilitator), Google Map, Mind Map or even a spreadsheet with some visual outputs.

Step 4: Connect with Curriculum

Much of what we learn as children and adults happens outside the classroom through real
world experiences and from our peers, mentors or on the job.

How might we connect today's core curriculum with the real world? That is an important
question that is in urgent need of answers. Kids today are asking far to often for relevance in
what they are learning. "Why am I learning this? I'll never use this!" is a response far too often
heard form the mouths of young people today.
Let's find ways to work with local businesses and subject matter experts to connect core
curriculum to the outside world and design engaging learning experiences in and out of the
classroom. Check out Chapter 4 "Asking the Experts" from Kathleen Cushman's wonderful
book Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery.

Please consider using project-based learning. Try using a matching technique to match
students with subject matter experts, businesses and community organisations. Here is a
great book on the subject by Suzie Boss. Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide
to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age.

Let's not forget the largely untapped wealth of experience and knowledge that resides with
retires, grandparents and millions of socially isolated senior citizens in aged care facilities.

Step 5: A Design Challenge for the Community

Here is an example of a community challenge to reinvent the school experience. I created the
Reinventing School Challenge earlier this year to encourage discussion, empower youth,
teachers and communities to design and facilitate change locally.

Reinventing school can mean lots of things such as redesigning classrooms, creating a
community garden, creating an open and shared learning space, designing a course, changing
the way students participate in decision making, you name it!

Q. 5 What Are Characteristics Of Community? Discuss Role Of Community In Pakistan?

Answer:

Meaning of community can be better understood if we analyze its characteristics or elements.

These characteristics decide whether a group is a community or not. However, community
has the following characteristics or elements:

(1) A group of people:

A group of people is the most fundamental or essential characteristic or element of
community. This group may be small or large but community always refers to a group of
people. Because without a group of people we can’t think of a community, when a group of
people live together and share a common life and binded by a strong sense of community
consciousness at that moment a community is formed. Hence a group of people is the first
pre-requisites of community.

(2) A definite locality:

It is the next important characteristic of a community. Because community is a territorial

group. A group of people alone can’t form a community. A group of people forms a
community only when they reside in a definite territory. The territory need not be fixed
forever. A group of people like nomadic people may change their habitations. But majority
community are settled and a strong bond of unity and solidarity is derived from their living in
a definite locality.

(3) Community Sentiment:

It is another important characteristic or element of community. Because without community

sentiment a community can’t be formed only with a group of people and a definite locality.
Community sentiment refers to a strong sense of awe feeling among the members or a feeling
of belonging together. It refers to a sentiment of common living that exists among the
members of a locality. Because of common living within an area for a long time a sentiment
of common living is created among the members of that area. With this the members
emotionally identify themselves. This emotional identification of the members distinguishes
them from the members of other community.

(4) Naturality:

Communities are naturally organised. It is neither a product of human will nor created by an
act of government. It grows spontaneously. Individuals became the member by birth.

(5) Permanence :

Community is always a permanent group. It refers to a permanent living of individuals within

a definite territory. It is not temporary like that of a crowd or association.

(6) Similarity:
The members of a community are similar in a number of ways. As they live within a definite
locality they lead a common life and share some common ends. Among the members
similarity in language, culture, customs, and traditions and in many other things is observed.
Similarities in these respects are responsible for the development of community sentiment.

(7) Wider Ends:

A community has wider ends. Members of a community associate not for the fulfillment of a
particular end but for a variety of ends. These are natural for a community.

(8) Total organised social life:

A community is marked by total organised social life. It means a community includes all
aspects of social life. Hence a community is a society in miniature.

(9) A Particular Name :

Every community has a particular name by which it is known to the world. Members of a
community are also identified by that name. For example people living in Odisha is known as
odia.

(10) No Legal Status:

A community has no legal status because it is not a legal person. It has no rights and duties in
the eyes of law. It is not created by the law of the land.

(11) Size of Community:

A community is classified on the basis of it’s size. It may be big or small. Village is an example
of a small community whereas a nation or even the world is an example of a big community.
Both the type of community are essential for human life.

(12) Concrete Nature:

A community is concrete in nature. As it refers to a group of people living in a particular

locality we can see its existence. Hence it is concrete.

(13) A community exists within society and possesses distinguishable structure which
distinguishes it from others.

Role of community in Pakistan:

Many schools lack basic facilities in Pakistan’s rural Sindh province. Students cram half-a-
dozen to a bench, or sit on the floor. There’s no electricity or running water. Teachers often
don’t show up. Children can’t always afford books, pencils and notebooks. The Government
of Sindh has tried to help by revitalizing a program that gives annual grants to school
management committees to use to improve education.

The problem with the program has been that many of the school management committees,
made up of community members and teachers, haven’t been effective. Many committees
don’t hold regular meetings, while others are dominated by a few people who don’t use the
grant money in an open and transparent way.

“Engagement with the community is key and that’s what’s often missing,” said Faisal Ahmad,
the Chief Program Manager of the Reform and Support Unit in Sindh province. “The funds are
there, the school committees are there, but the people aren’t getting information about the
grants, so they aren’t able to keep an eye on the funds.”

A World Bank pilot, part of the Sindh Education Sector Project aimed to make a difference by
helping community members get more involved. Many educators believe that community
involvement in school management is critical for improving education. The pilot gives
community members new channels for getting involved in education and taking an active role
in school improvement. An impact evaluation, funded by the Strategic Impact Evaluation
Fund, is measuring the effect and will give policymakers information they can use to improve
community involvement in school management.

“The impact evaluation is being done at the right time,” said Dr. Fazlullah Pechuho, Secretary
of the Education and Literacy Department in Sindh province. “We are planning to review our
existing policy on school management committees and the evaluation findings will be
important.”

In rural Sindh, three different approaches to improving community involvement are being
tested, both separately and together. The first promotes community involvement through a
text messaging service to keep community members and teachers up to date on issues
surrounding school management and the grant. The anonymous platform allows people to
discuss concerns and exchange information on schools and school committees using text
messages. The second promotes community involvement through facilitated village meetings
to give people information about their rights, responsibilities and resources for school
management. The third tries to revitalize the school committees by holding new elections and
training committee members.

“In our country, one of the biggest problems is no one monitors the education system, the
system has been left in the lurch by the leadership,” said Hamzo Khan Tagar, a senior program
manager in the government's Reform Support Unit. “Communities need to be able to manage
and monitor their own schools. Most importantly, they can monitor how government funds
can be better utilized and reduce the rate of corruption in public education.”

Even before final results are in from the impact evaluation, the Government of Sindh is using
what it has learned to improve other programs. The text messaging platform used to get
community members involved in discussions about the schools was so popular that the
education ministry has created similar systems for people to register complaints, among other
things.

“There are many children in Pakistan whose talents will never see the light of day because the
system continues to fail them,” says Salman Asim, the project’s lead researcher and an
economist at the World Bank. “To save those millions of dreams, it is important to invest in
innovative interventions. The pilot project is one such example of creating pressure points at
the community level to offset a weak and underperforming education system.”