EDU 509: Whole School Improvement Approach: How can we make it work

Final Reflection Paper

Submitted by: Pratyasha Bhattacharjee

Student ID: 21357004
Date of Submission: 8th November, 2022
 Reflection Paper on School Improvement Initiatives

School improvement plan is a change that is planned and aims to improve a school’s educational

or academic, and administrative performance. A need-based and planned school improvement plan

is needed for effective and sustainable educational development.

School improvement plans can be targeted to solve problems of different areas related to education.

In this article, we will discuss four areas of school improvement and their necessity. The four

arrears to be discussed on this paper are:

 Professional development of teachers

 Development of academic supervision process

 Improvement of the school’s infrastructure

 Stakeholder engagement in the school improvement process

 Professional Development of Teachers:

Teachers are one of the core parts of school improvement. The learning, to a large extent,

depends on the teacher’s skill, dedication, and performance. So teachers’ professional

growth is a key area of school improvement. Professional growth includes teachers’ skills

development like material development, classroom management, etc.

There are a few initiatives that can be taken for teachers’ professional growth. But the most

important initiative is ensuring teachers’ training on material development, classroom

management, Socio-emotional needs, etc.

In the schools of Bangladesh, teachers are not properly trained to achieve the academic

goal targeted for each grade level. As a result, in government primary schools, less than
50% of students achieve grade-level competency. Traditional learning methods, lack of

inclusiveness in the classroom, unempathetic behavior towards students, etc are considered

as the main hindrance towards ensuring sustainable and fruitful learning. Teachers can not

provide proper guidance and learning to students because of their lack of skill and up to

date training. They also hardly trained on classroom management, and struggle to manage

their classroom as in Bangladesh, there is a huge number of students in every class. The

teachers are also unable to address students socio-emotional needs, and empathize with the

situation of students. These things acts as an major obstacle to academic growth of students.

The actions to introduce this training needs a plan that would be fruitful and feasible to

apply in Bangladeshi context. The plan will include below mentioned phases:

 Initiation: The initiation will include planning for the trainings including selecting

schools, teachers, training subject and materials. Recruitment of the trainers will

also be a part of this phase. A timeline would be set for primary initiation and

implementation. The necessary resources are budget, skilled professionals and

trainers, a continued plan.

 Implementation: This phase will be designed for the application of the plan and

initiation the training. Each teacher of the selected school wisubject-basedr subject

based training once a year. As resources, planning for training sessions, materials,

and assessment process would be designed. Designing of this phase will need a

year, and each teacher will get training for once a year. Besides specific subjects,

training will be provided on classroom management, socio emotional learning.

 Institutionalization: In this phase the yearly training process will be introduced in

all the schools. All government teachers will receive yearly training on subject-
 specific knowledge, material-based learning, classroom management, and socio-

emotional learning.

 Development of Academic Supervision Process: Academic supervision process is the

process of monitoring and evaluating if academic performance of a school. In government

primary school, bodies like Head Teacher, Assistant Thana Education Officer (ATEO),

Thana Education Officer (TEO) are responsible for academic monitoring. But in reality

there are lack of monitoring and supervision, and lack of proper follow-up for teachers.

The visits for monitoring and supervision are also pre-planned ones, so the problem

remains intact.

The initiative that is need to be taken for this is a clear division of supervision and

increasing accountability for ensuring regular monitoring and feedback. The classes and

academic activities should be supervised regularly, and written feedback should be

mandatory. There is also provisions about supervision and feedback giving. But in

practical, they are hardly followed. So supervisors should be made more accountable to

increase their regularity. Regular supervision and feedback will push teachers to use their

full potential and improve their classroom performance. Improved learning performance

of teachers will help to improve the learning quality and promote more engaging and

fruitful classes.

The stages of the process of implementation of the plan will be:

 Initiation: In this stage, policy and plan will be formed on how the academic

supervision will happen. For example, Headteachers will supervise and monitor

classrooms, and will give written feedback to every teacher weekly. The

supervision would be sudden and uninformed. ATEO will monitor the

 supervision of head teacher regularly, and do monthly visits at school to observe

classes and give feedback. ATEO has to report TEO and other higher authorities

about regular visits and feedback. Half-yearly follow-up would be done to

report the progress on given feedback and to decide further initiatives. The

necessary resources are budgets, materials for training, new recruitment for

academic supervision.

 Implementation: After preparing the action plan, a pilot plan should be

implemented to test the feasibility and improvement needed for this initiative

in a limited number of school. After monitoring for a year, the progress should

be tracked, and necessary change should be made before mass implementation.

Head teachers, ATEO, TEO and other supervising bodies should be trained

properly. A body should be recruited for the monitoring and evaluation of the

supervision process.

 Institutionalization: After the needed change and end of pilot project, the

implementation should be implemented in all the schools. The process then

should be monitored, yearly evaluation should be done, and needed upgradation

should be innovated and implemented continuously.

 Improvement of the School’s Infrastructure: One reason for less effectiveness of

classroom learning, virtual exclusion, and poor teaching quality is the infrastructural

problem of government primary schools. As we know, classroom size, seating

arrangements, and environment of classroom play important roles in the learning process

of students. So, to ensure a better learning environment and ensure quality teaching, the

development of school infrastructure is needed.

 To solve this issue, a planned and need-based individual change should be initiated in every

school as per need such as students’ number, area of the school, student-teacher ratio.

 Initiation: For the implementation of the development of school infrastructure, a

detailed plan should be made for providing need-based support in each school. A

budget should be introduced. per school to initiate this development plan. A

maximum number of students should be decided for each class so that the teacher-

student ratio supports the concept of inclusive learning. Resources needed for this

initiative are skilled and experienced policymakers, trained professionals to support

the teachers, expanded land and increasing number of teachers.

 Implementation: At first, a small-scale implementation should be introduced to

schools. The seating arrangement should be changed in a way that every student

becomes equally visible and accessible to the teacher. More rooms, classes, and

sections should be introduced as per need of school with the aim of removing

overburdening student numbers per class. Teachers should be trained to provide

one on one support to students.

 Institutionalization: A budget should be decided for implementing this plan on a

country level, and a ten years plan can be launched. More teachers should be

recruited, land of schools should be expanded, and teachers should be trained to

provide necessary support and training to bring sustainable change for students.

 Stakeholder engagement in the school improvement process: Stakeholders are an

unavoidable part of the school improvement process. The definition of stakeholders

includes parents, teachers, Headteachers, School management committees, and community

members. Stakeholders play an important role in ensuring quality education both inside

and outside of school. So, it is important to include stakeholders in the school improvement

process.

To include stakeholders in the school improvement process, a decentralized approach to

decision-making should be introduced. Support and changes should also be need-based for

every school rather than always making centralized approaches.

The stages of the implementation process for the decentralization initiative are given

below:

 Initiate: In this first stage, decisions should be taken on the sectors in which the

opinion and perspective of stakeholders can be taken and who will act in this

decision-making process as stakeholders. For example, when deciding school

hours, classroom size and teaching-learning method, the perspective and opinions

of teachers can play an important role. Again, while taking the individual school-

based improvement approach, the opinion of parents, guardians, SMC, and

community members could be valuable.

 Implementation: In this stage, a stakeholders management approach should be

taken and applied in the field level. Yearly improvement initiatives should be taken

to selected schools and the change should be assessed. For adding the perspective

of teachers, teacher representatives should be selected through a yearly election.

Also, parents’ representatives should be present at regular meetings of stakeholders

to suggest school improvement. A yearly report should be submitted to ministry

mentioning the needed support and changes of school which are decided through

stakeholder participation.
  Institutionalization: After assessing the pilot project and yearly feedbacks of

stakeholders, necessary steps should be launched every year according to the

provided budget based on priority. This project should be continued and done in

yearly basis.

From the above discussion, it can be said that through proper planning and implementation,

systematic, sustainable, and effective school improvement can be done with the participation of

all stakeholders.