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Education Quality Survey
Details
Locations:Bhutan
Start Date:Jan 1, 2007
End Date:Dec 31, 2007
Sectors: Education, Research
Description
Cambridge Education supported the Royal Government of Bhutan to conduct a nationwide survey to identify reform measures for improving the quality of education.
The Royal Government of Bhutan is making concerted efforts to improve education quality along a number of dimensions, including teacher quality, infrastructure, facilities, and curricula. The number of children going to school in Bhutan has increased greatly over the past ten years in line with Bhutan’s commitment to meet the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As a result, the education system has been challenged to keep up with the expansion of school enrolment.
The priorities for education policymakers in the country have become focused on the need to improve education quality. As part of the education sector quality review, Cambridge Education conducted a nationwide school survey commissioned by the World Bank. The consultant team, consisting of one international consultant and twenty six national consultants, designed, piloted and administered tests to Grade 2 and Grade 4 students to assess the quality of the education system. Broad characteristics of school learning environments were also surveyed including teacher, parent and community indicators.
Cambridge Education used a survey methodology known as IRT, which incorporated a new and innovative approach to test results. A first objective was to establish a baseline for learning outcomes. A second objective was to understand better what the determinants of learning are, to identify key bottlenecks and improve education policy strategies.
A key challenge in conducting this nationwide survey was obtaining information and data from remote communities with limited access across Bhutan. As such, it was vital to build capacity of a national team to conduct the surveys and take ownership of the project. A team of school graduates collected the data, coordinated by a national team leader trained by Cambridge Education.
The survey helped to identify specific reform measures for schools and teachers to be undertaken at the local and National levels in order to ensure quality and effective learning in schools. Policy implications emerging from the survey concluded that the educational attainment of children can be improved by interventions aimed at schools at the teacher level, including upgrading training, hiring more female teachers, helping children to attend the right grade for their age; and, in some schools, addressing teacher absence. The quality survey was also paralleled in other World Bank surveys in India and Pakistan, enabling useful comparisons to be drawn between education sectors in the three countries.