Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) plays a central role in leading the discussion in developing, curriculum,
supplementary education materials especially on health, environment and peace matters not only to define what
quality in education means, but also to identify approaches that lead to quality improvements and enhanced student
learning. However, despite all the discussion, the reality is that most classrooms in Sub-Saharan Africa still fail
to create good quality learning conditions. Additionally, there is growing awareness that governments cannot supply
quality education for their burgeoning school-age populations. Therefore, parents and other stakeholders must take
more responsibility for providing alternative opportunities for their children to gain basic skills.
African parents will find it extremely hard to buy books on health, environment and peace matters especially
because their earnings are very low in terms of incomes.
Definitions of quality are not fixed, but rather evolve as conditions change. Thus, any discussion of quality or action to improve quality must be preceded by an understanding of the learning experiences of individual pupils. Definitions of quality are also determined at the country level: countries determine the relationship between their own quality standards and "internationally accepted" definitions. Again, efforts to define quality and improve learning must be gauged at the school and classroom level and involve ongoing systematic assessment.
What needs to be done:
- Ongoing research on quality, particularly at the school and classroom level. This research has provided valuable insight into changes that are needed in policy, programs, and practice.
- Curriculum development to improve cultural sensitivity and learning pedagogy, and child-centered methodologies that introduce skill-based competencies.
- Development of instructional material and improved textbooks that incorporate more active learning and sequenced learning objectives.
- Improved teacher preparation and ongoing professional development of teachers.
- New methodologies to assess pupil proficiency and teacher pedagogical skills.
- Introduction of educational data for policymakers to use for planning and programming.
- Broader stakeholder participation - NGO's, parents, teachers, school directors, and specialists in educational research networks – in research, discussion of quality and learning, and development of alternative approaches.
Challenges:
- Efforts to increase access press systems to maintain, let alone enhance, educational quality. This creates a misalignment between the political and educational agendas. The political agenda is to provide fee access to increasing numbers of children, while the educational agenda is to maintain the quality of learning.
- Language of instruction continues to be complex issue. Efforts to reconcile use of former colonial languages with a variety of indigenous languages in ways that respect cultural identity and improve student learning have yet to be resolved.
- Experience suggests that technology can serve a useful role as an instructional medium. Ways to leverage this effectively and ensure that the substance of what is shared through technology is of value remains a critical need.
- There is a tremendous need for more focus on assessment. Many countries have placed high priority on norm-referenced tests that function to limit access to higher levels of education. Efforts to improve quality demand more "authentic" forms of assessment, e.g., curriculum-based tests, continuous assessment, and more holistic classroom-based and teacher-made testing procedures that can better measure what students are learning.