ELEVENTH CONFERENCE OF COMMONWEALTH EDUCATION MINISTERS Barbados, 29 October to 2 November 1990
COUNTRY PAPERS ON IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF BASIC EDUCATION
Education throughout the Commonwealth has expanded dramatically over the past 25 years: today most countries recruit into school 85 percent or more of primary school age children. Governments are now as much concerned with the need to improve schools as with the need to expand them. Yet these same schools are often short of resources and are staffed by teachers who are poorly prepared for their career; and they may be encumbered by a teaching process lacking in imagination and vigour.
The theme of the Eleventh Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers will be: Improving the Quality of Basic Education. Discussions will concentrate on ways of raising the quality of education, both within schools and in out-of-school programmes, which take account of harsh economic realities.
In this context basic education is seen as embracing the work of the primary and lower secondary stages of education up to the end of the first stage of secondary education (often the eighth or ninth grade) when the bulk of children in many countries would expect to leave school. Basic education out of school is seen as including programmes roughly equivalent to the work of primary and lower secondary schools.
No single definition of quality is possible: definitions will vary between and within countries. Nor are quality and quantity necessarily in conflict: one dimension of the quality of an education system is its accessibility to would-be learners and its capacity to provide and expand educational opportunities to both children and adults.
Country papers could usefully describe problems of quality, policy towards them, and measures that have been adopted to raise quality in education. Papers need not attempt to be comprehensive. It may be more interesting to describe and analyse particular successful or unsuccessful projects and programmes aimed at improving quality, and to draw conclusions of possible interest to other countries. Accounts of ways ministries of education have sought to improve education for girls and women, and to broaden their access to basic education, would be particularly welcome. Since this is an international conference any international dimensions of your experience or suggested priorities for Commonwealth co-operation will be of particular
value.
It is suggested that you may wish to give a brief description of educational policies and strategies, and then discuss measures to raise quality and ways of finding resources. The following headings may be useful. Some basic information about the structure of your education system, in an appendix, would be helpful.
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Policies and Strategies
Government policies on basic education as reflected in national policy documents, and priorities for quality improvement. Challenges being addressed: for example relevance or breadth of curriculum; levels of achievement; particular needs of women and girls; attendance of students; conditions of buildings; strengthening the teaching force; means of assessing quality (inspection/supervision); problems of co-ordinating curricular
changes/examinations/teacher education.
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Private notes are available after approval.