Across the world, there are many well-conceived, heavily-funded, education projects whose impact is minimal or unknown after the funding period ends. English in Action (EIA) embarked on its journey as a discrete project under... [ view full abstract ]
Across the world, there are many well-conceived, heavily-funded, education projects whose impact is minimal or unknown after the funding period ends. English in Action (EIA) embarked on its journey as a discrete project under the Bangladesh Primary Education Development Programme III. Externally managed and delivered, it aimed to gradually institutionalise its evidence-based best practices in order to have a lasting impact on teaching and learning within the government primary education system. After 9 years, EIA’s teacher education programme is now at the point where there is significant Government ownership, with materials and approaches embedded at central and local levels, ensuring that they will eventually reach every English teacher in the country. Moreover, there is currently a shift in the Government of Bangladesh’s underpinning model of teacher education from a cascade training model to a school-based teacher professional development approach, enhanced by digital technology. Learning from English in Action is currently being incorporated into the design of the Government’s next Sector Wide Approach Programme for Primary Education.
The purpose of this symposium is to hear a variety of voices from the project and the Bangladesh Directorate of Primary Education exploring the different ways in which the lessons learnt and capacity developed through a project approach can be institutionalised within the practices at different levels of a national education system.
The symposium, facilitated by EIA team members, will adopt an interactive approach, opening the floor to the audience to share their ideas and experiences on possible strategies to make the transition from discrete project into a sustainable teacher education programme situated within Government systems. Within this framework, we will consider different aspects of this approach including,
- how essential elements of a successful school-based approach to professional development can work within the Government mechanisms of a highly centralized system,
- how to scale up within the system, gradually handing responsibility for delivery to the government to ensure sustainability, whilst still maintaining quality and an innovative school based approach which results in improvement of teaching and learning
- how projects can get and sustain country-level buy-in
- how far the assigned length of projects and the degree of flexibility to ‘evolve’ enables success in bringing about sustained changes in teaching and learning
To inform this discussion, EIA will draw on stories from champions as well as research evidence to explore learning from 9 years of working with teachers and education officers. The symposium will hear and contrast the perspectives and experiences of those working within the Government, expected to take on new approaches and those in the project advocating for change. It will show how initially focusing on discreet groups at all levels of the education system, from which champions have emerged and, how gradually connecting them together has resulted in sustainable change Each of the groups below has had their own role to play in shaping the process of institutionalization. In this symposium these champions, will present their perspectives on the process and impact of embedding and sustaining the EIA programme within government systems:
Teachers and Head teachers
Local Education Officers
Central government officers
EIA Project Team
Donor ( DFID Bangladesh)
Finally, we will return to the audience to bring together insights from the symposium into the approaches needed to enable and support all teachers to bring about a sustained change in teaching and learning.
