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Can the expansion of private schooling in developing countries serve to improve access, efficiency, quality and equity in basic education? The case of primary education in South Sudan

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Originally posted on June 21, 2021 @ 7:03 pm

Introduction

The focus of this essay will be on the role of private actors in primary education in the Republic of South Sudan (South Sudan). This paper seeks to discuss how the expansion of private schooling, specifically the role of so-called low fee private schools, can serve to improve access, efficiency, quality, and equity to primary education in South Sudan, in the context of education for all (EFA). Low fee or cost private schools (LCPS) catering for basic education have grown in number in a variety of low-income contexts over recent years and data evaluating impact of these schools is agnostic. The concept of low-fee vs low-cost private schools is contentious (Day Ashley et al 2014), however in this essay I use the definition given by Verger et al(2018), “private schools that have been set up and owned by an individual or group of individuals for the purpose of making a profit and are supposed to be ‘affordable’ for low-income families” (pp 256). There continues to be debate about these institutions and the role they can play in development with one side claiming that they can improve access and quality and the other concerned with issues of equity. They may also not be the most efficient way of providing education for all. This essay aims to analyse the role that LCPS can play in the fragile state of South Sudan through the lenses of key economics of education principles. A fragile state can be defined as “lack[ing] political will and/or capacity to provide the basic functions needed for poverty reduction, development and to safeguard the security and human rights of their populations.” (OECD 2007, page 2). A fragile state provides an interesting case study for these economic concepts because of the inherent lack of government capacity to regulate markets and an extreme scarcity of resources will make it challenging to implement a nationalized education system.

This essay is organised as follows: in the first three sections I present a discussion of the relevant economic theory and its application to low-income contexts before moving on in section four to review the application of these theories specifically in South Sudan. I argue that private schools are an important ally for low-income governments to expand access to education, but their role needs to be carefully planned to ensure issues of citizenship and developing social cohesion are considered, alongside issues of equity of access and quality. Private education gives flexibility to meet the linguistic and cultural needs of communities through consumer choice. Private education may help overcome geographic and structural difficulties through market competition.

Section 1: Human Capital Theory and Education Investment

The relationship between education and the economy was first recognized as early as Adam Smith (1776) but it was not until Shultz (1961) and Becker (1964) that it was first formalized through their human capital theory (HCT). This theory positioned education as a form of growth for an economy as opposed to a consumption and has been the major justification for the investment in education systems of developing nations by external donors. Notable in this regard is the World Bank that oversees the human capital project and produces the human capital index (World Bank 2021a).

HCT justifies individual and societal investment in education by assuming that human skills, knowledge, and their development through education are all directly linked to economic productivity. If we accept this assumption, it follows that by increasing the level of education that any individual has, we can raise the education level of the population on average and therefore increase the productivity of an economy and allow it to grow. Education can bring both monetary and non-monetary benefits to individuals and society which can be partially measured through the estimation of rates of return. Amongst policy makers working in low-income contexts, HCT has justified concerns about making quality education of all levels accessible to individuals within any developing country. Once we agree that investment in education is essential for the development of a low-income economy, we then must agree whether this investment is best realized through government spending or through private markets.

Orthodox, neo-classical economics views individuals and markets as superior to government and regulation (Alcott 2021, Chang 2011). This view argues that individuals and markets lead to improvements in quality, efficiency, and equity far superior to any provided by the government. This is because individuals are supposedly rational and assumed to hold a high degree of knowledge about what is best for them to maximise their utility. In this way, markets are thought to be more responsive and flexible to the needs of the individual as opposed to the government. This responsiveness is theoretically due to the accountability of the market. Those actors in the market who are not responsive to demands of the consumer will lose out. In this way the market reflects Darwinian principles of natural selection (ibid). In addition to this view, Public Choice Theory (Buchanan & Tullock 1962) suggests that all elements of government action are made by self-interested actors creating a principal-agent problem. Public Choice Theory argues that governments cannot really provide anything for society because parties and politicians are self-interested and following their own interests in pursuing policies. Thus, from this view, an ideal society is one where people can make as many decisions for themselves as possible through markets. Finally, if we accept that individual citizens reap the greatest benefits from investment in their education, then there is a case that they should be the ones to pay for it through private markets. According to neoliberal economic principles this use of private markets for education would have the added benefit of driving up quality.

Arguments that favour government production of education justify it for several reasons discussed in this essay. Firstly, education brings benefits or returns to wider society, not just the individual. These societal benefits of education are described as “externalities” (Oketch 2021a), “neighbourhood effects” (Friedman 1962) or “semi-public goods” (Sen 1999) and can be monetary as well as non-monetary. Non-monetary societal returns have been suggested to include reductions in fertility and mortality rates, the avoidance of natural disasters like famines, and greater democratic participation (Sen 1999). Secondly, it may be more efficient for the government to provide education because of deviations from the first best economy model (Barr 2020). Finally, government provision of education is justified because education is a fundamental human right, and governments are best placed to ensure all their citizens can access it.

Despite these theoretical considerations, in low-income contexts there may be many barriers to effective government provision of education. These are documented by Tooley (2009) and include reasons, like graft, unmotivated teachers, and language barriers between teachers and students in poly-lingual societies. Finance is often an issue for the governments of low-income countries with data from UNESCO showing that in Sub-Saharan Africa alone 16 countries spend less than the UNESCO recommended 4% of their GDP on education (UNESCO 2021). South Sudan ranks the lowest among East African countries, currently spending less than 1% of GDP on public education investment (UNICEF 2019). Further to these concerns, in a fragile state like South Sudan a top-down national education system may not be the most efficient way to organise the system, because inter-group and intra-group trust may be lacking after a civil war. An important final consideration is that different ethnic groups may have different linguistic needs which may reduce the efficiency of a national education system if it takes a one-size-fits all approach.

Section 2: Access and Quality through Choice and Competition

If education returns benefits to wider society, then ensuring access to quality education for all citizens is of consequence to the development of that society. This access can be provided through private markets or through government intervention. Even neoliberal writers who argued for free markets also argued for some government intervention in education. Writing in 1962, Milton Friedman referred to the societal non-monetary returns to education as “neighbourhood effects”. For Friedman these effects are one of two major reasons why government should intervene in education, the other being paternalistic care for irresponsible individuals (children). Friedman recognises that government intervention is important: “A stable and democratic society is impossible without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens and without widespread acceptance of some set of values. Education can contribute to both. In consequence, the gain from the education of a child accrues not only to the child or to his parents but also to other members of the society…” (Friedman 1962 pp 86). Even this simple recognition that education promotes a stable society is enough for us to consider the role that government should play in education.

            Ultimately however, Friedman (ibid) favours as large a role as possible in the market for private schools, and as limited role for government as possible. For Friedman the ability of users to exert choice through the marketplace, away from government intervention is the ultimate expression of democratic values and freedom. Friedman uses the word freedom to focus on freedom of choice and economic freedom primarily as opposed to wider freedoms expressed by writers like Sen (1999). Friedman suggests that general education for citizenship, literacy and numeracy should be government supported but what he terms “vocational training” should not be supported by the government because it renders most returns to the individual. For Friedman (1962) governments should limit themselves to ensuring access to basic education that provides a stable society through literacy and citizenship education. It is unclear what exactly he means by vocational training initially although he provides some clarity later with the reference to dentists and beauticians. Friedman argues that parents should not be forced to pay for education if they cannot afford it as their children are not an asset that they can rid themselves of unlike a car (or a flatscreen TV). He makes a good case for social responsibility and argues that one of the reasons family sizes can remain large is that people do not always take financial responsibility for the education of their children. Friedman (ibid) argues that government involvement in education should be limited to the imposition of minimum levels of education by law (to ensure basic and citizenship education) and the financing of primary and secondary education (through vouchers to allow market mechanisms to work). He argues against the nationalising of the education industry.

There are two major tensions highlighted in Friedman’s writing. Firstly, we value independence from government in education for a free-thinking society to exist, but we value government controls for citizenship education to ensure a stable society. Secondly, there is an apparent tension with HCT as Friedman claims that there are no externalities of vocational or professional training and that all benefit is accrued by the individual. He uses this argument to justify removing government funding for higher education. However, HCT argues that improving educational levels through tertiary education improves the growth of an economy generally and some authors argue that the returns to society from higher education are greater than those for primary or secondary (Patrinos 2016). I do not think Friedman’s assertions about vocational training are supported by evidence as more recent quantitative studies in the field fail to concur.

Friedman’s theories of economic organisation were developed in the context of a high income, stable, monolingual educated society, with a functioning government able to provide funding to education and are informed by a culture of liberalism. His proposals assume a market with no imperfections, discussed below. For now, I just want to highlight that most citizens cannot easily relocate and take their vouchers to whatever school they choose for their children.

 These assumptions mean that the application of Friedman’s thinking to low-income contexts some of which may be polylingual and unstable, with lower levels of education in the general population needs careful consideration. Härmä (2020) argues that even so called LCPS in low-income contexts can still be too expensive for many of the poorest children to attend. The fees are low to outside observers but not necessarily those members of the community that need access to education. If this is generally the case, then private schools may reduce access to education. For Härmä (ibid) because education is a basic human right, it cannot be left up to the private market in low-income contexts because many families would still be unable to enrol. Tooley (2009) argues that LCPS will sometimes increase access. Studying LCPS in Lagos, he found that many parents living in slums would send children to LCPS because the walk to a government school was too dangerous. Supporting this Pinnock (2013) found, despite the cost, that families use private schools because government schools are considered low quality, and other authors have found that LCPS increase access as they are found in areas where there are no government schools (Andrabi et al 2008). The case for LCPS increasing access in the absence of suitable government schools is very strong.

Section 3: Efficiency and Equity Considerations

While ensuring access to a quality education is important for development, resources (financial, human and material) are scarce and not equally available. The concepts of economic efficiency and equity help us consider how best to allocate and distribute those resources. Economic efficiency is concerned with the input of given resources into a system and the outputs achieved from those inputs. Equity is concerned with the distribution of those resources. In this section I will focus on the concepts of efficiency followed by equity in low-income contexts generally before applying them to the case of South Sudan in the next section.

Economic efficiency is concerned with the optimal allocation of scarce resources given peoples tastes (Barr 2020). Lockheed & Hanushek (1994) write that efficient systems are ones that obtain more outputs for given inputs or a comparable level of output for fewer inputs. In low-income contexts the most efficient system is one that will get more children into primary education for the same amount of funding. From this perspective, a country must be concerned with increasing access to education before considering quality. “For a country that does not have universal primary education, expanding exposure – almost regardless of quality considerations – is likely to be an appealing policy. But once general exposure, which can be justified on equity grounds, is reached, educational policies switch from purely quantity to considerations of differential quality.” (ibid). In other words, the primary focus of the education system, at least at first, in a developing country must be concerned with getting “general exposure” or as many children enrolled in school as possible. Once steps to achieve this are underway then concerns with quality become more important. Therefore, in terms of the allocation of scarce financial resources, we should aim to maximise the number of children enrolled in school for every dollar spent.

This maximisation of education is described as productive efficiency and as discussed by Oketch (2021a), is only one part of the economic efficiency concept. The second part is allocative efficiency which is concerned with how well resources are allocated across communities. And the final part is pareto efficiency which occurs when it is impossible to make one party better off without making someone worse off. In society we want to maximise pareto efficiency to ensure that the economy is as efficient as possible. In terms of the free-market, trades are efficient only when they better one party without compromising another party. A totally efficient economy is maximised when as many efficient trades as possible are made. For education this means ensuring that the production and allocation of education resources to one sector of society does not make another sector disadvantaged. It is not efficient to educate some at the expense of others.

When the market economy delivers an outcome that does not maximise efficiency in this sense there is a market failure. In the prior section we examined arguments in favour of a free market in education, where private providers can compete in the market and consumers can choose which provider to use. This could improve access and quality even in low-income contexts according to Tooley (2009). We will now consider whether it is economically efficient to rely on private markets considering market failure. Market failure would mean that a society does not reap the maximum social returns to investment in education.

Education markets can fail for a variety of reasons. One of these is information failure. Oketch (2021a) and Lockheed and Hanushek (1994) claim that poor illiterate parents are unable to choose a quality school, that these families may not be able to discern a quality educational product from another. “illiterate parents in developing countries are likely to send their children to schools having few material resources and poorly educated teachers” (Lockheed & Hanushek 1994). However, I think this characterization is weak. Tooley (2009) makes a compelling case that parents can tell when their children are learning nothing, citing this as a reason for parents choosing LCPS over government schools. It could also be argued that educated wealthy parents fail to make a good choice in schools as they can be swayed by marketing and fads, or their own experiences of schooling. The point is that parents may not always know what works, but they can tell when their children are making progress. They know when their child is learning to read, write and use numbers. It could be argued that in the education marketplace it is very hard to gain this information until your child attends a school. Since moving is school is not necessarily as easy as Friedman (1962) assumes and the results of which can have negative impacts on learning (Hattie 2008). Informational failures can occur in education markets even if multiple school providers exist in a community. Parents cannot always simply put their children in another school. Schools are often selected based on proximity to home, as Tooley (2009) shows in his work in Lagos and families are restricted by distance, dangers and transport making free choice in the market problematic.

Another reason for market failures in education markets is credit failure. This means that not all consumers can access the funds needed to access private schooling for their children. This could be particularly important in low-income contexts where the choice to send a child to school can mean a loss of income for the family. Parents have no collateral to gain credit and are unable to borrow money against the latent future earnings of their child. This may restrict their ability to from gain access to schooling from private providers.

Externalities, information, and credit failures are imperfections in the market. Taken together they are all examples of deviations from what Barr (2020) describes as the model of the first best economy: an idealised model state under which the market can allocate resources efficiently. Imperfections in the market move us to the model of the second-best economy which justifies some form of government intervention in the form of: Regulation; Finance; Production; Income Transfers (taxation). The choice of which will depend on context.

Equity, or the distribution of resources, is another reason for government intervention (Oketch 2021b). Equity is the fairness with which resources are distributed between individuals or groups. Here the government redistributes resources, shifting resources from some groups to others. This is needed to achieve pareto-efficiency. In this sense, equity can be seen as a form of efficiency. For example, if education is paid for entirely through private markets without government intervention, then those whose parents earn the most will get the most by accident of birth. This would be inefficient as discussed above but also not equitable. Thus, efficiency in this case this would mean ensuring that the access to quality education is evenly distributed.

In low-income contexts, EFA in primary education has been shown to increases access in terms of enrolment but reduce quality as more children place increased strain on the capacity of teachers to teach. The outcome of this is that more children are educated but to a lower quality (Inoue & Oketch, 2008). Specifically, EFA has increased equity but reduced efficiency and quality in Malawi (Inoue & Oketch, 2008). This highlights the need to consider equity of procedure and distribution, as well as efficiency when it comes to government provision of primary education in South Sudan.

When considering the scarcity of finance, we may have a trade-off between equity and efficiency. Cunha and Heckman (2007) note how there is a trade-off for the timing of investment in education. In terms of primary education in low-income contexts, where there may be polylingual ethnically diverse groups, there may be a trade-off between the distribution of access to education for different groups and the efficiency of providing access to education to those groups. Private markets funded by government vouchers may help to alleviate this problem.

Section 4: South Sudan

So far, we have discussed the key economic principles and their application to low-income contexts. I now move on to apply these concepts to South Sudan. Totally landlocked, South Sudan is a sub-Saharan African state that borders Sudan to the North, Ethiopia to the East, Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the South and the Central African Republic to the West. It was announced as the world’s newest country in 2011 but the birth of South Sudan has been difficult. Within two years, the country was plunged into its own civil war, after tribal groups, once united against the central government of Sudan, fought each other for control of the new country. This internal war lasted from 2013 until 2020 and left 400,000 dead (Checchi et al 2018). South Sudan is composed of 10 states, 60 indigenous ethnic groups and 80 linguistic partitions (UN 2021) and this diversity and distrust amongst groups has been a key driver of conflict. In addition to this recent endemic ethnic conflict, the country poses some extremely challenging terrain and suffers from flooding and a lack of infrastructure, and which leaves almost 60% of the country inaccessible for much of the year. 82% of the 11 million population is defined as living in poverty and the gross national income (GNI) is around 1090 USD (World Bank 2021b). All these factors have contributed to South Sudan been classified as a fragile state. In 2020 South Sudan ranked 3rd on the Fragile States Index with a composite score of 110 out of 120 across the indicators (Fragile States Index 2021).

South Sudan suffers from an unusually severe educational situation (Global Partnership for Education 2012) with an adult literacy rate of around 27% and enrolment rates of 73% for primary and 11% for Secondary (World Bank 2021b). Resources for schools are stretched with learning materials and trained teachers being in short supply. This unique mix of challenges: lack of trust between ethnic groups and conflict, poor infrastructure, lack of material and human resources, linguistic, cultural, and geographic diversity, and limited finances present severe problems for a national government in South Sudan in the top-down implementation of a public school system.

The role of the government in South Sudan to achieve EFA is currently limited by the reasons outlined above. In this scenario it may be helpful to consider the role that providers of private education may play in helping citizens of South Sudan achieve equitable access to quality education that is efficient in terms of the allocation of scarce financial resources. The ideal state is to have a fully funded government primary education system that caters for the needs of all communities. However, at present there is a significant challenge to developing this system. Below I offer some suggestions on ways to achieve this, starting with supported private schooling that can be slowly replaced by government schooling over time.

In terms of education markets in South Sudan, there are several major concerns which need to be considered. Firstly, linguistic diversity which provides a challenge of access to the curriculum and thus quality of learning. Secondly, recent conflict which has left many children out of school (UN 2021), and thirdly lack of shared citizenship means that many different ethnic groups do not identify with each other’s common values of what it means to be a South Sudanese citizen. Education can be a powerful force for developing a national identity (Bereketeab 2020) and an understanding amongst divergent groups of shared South Sudanese cultural values, while different cultural identities can be also be respected. It may well be that private education markets within communities provide an initial solution to this problem as they provide an alternative to state-controlled top-down government-imposed education for all, which may be distrusted by some groups. Private actors providing education within communities may be more trusted, especially if the providers are managed by individuals from the community as they may offer an alternative to any apparent government agenda. Mechanisms should be put in place to support the development of education markets in areas of linguistic and cultural diversity, but government support as capacity grows will be essential to ensure that all children are able to access these opportunities.

One mechanism could be a voucher scheme funded by the government or NGOs helping families access schools in their local area. This would need to be backed up by incentives for families to send their children to school. Some families may lose income with their children attending school or they may not trust the individuals providing the schooling following on from events in the recent conflict. Parents will need to feel secure in entrusting their children to other adults. Providing the education will not be enough to overcome these barriers until trust is built and the benefits of education can be widely felt.

Another mechanism could be micro finance loans used to help entrepreneurs start schools in their local communities where none currently exist. This added to incentives for parents to let their children attend school and vouchers to support the costs of schooling could be combined to kick start education projects specific to the needs of diverse communities. These mechanisms could be regulated by the loan providers to prevent monopolisation of the education market which would create further imperfections.

A second benefit here is that there is the potential for children to be educated in their mother tongue at least at primary level. Learning in one’s mother tongue is essential in the early years of education (Taylor-Leech 2013) because without this provision children struggle to access the curriculum and make learning gains. This can mean that children who cannot access the learning can quickly fall behind children who can, and these learning losses will only be compounded with time. Studies like Young Lives have shown that many children in low-income contexts have learning levels below the grade they are currently enrolled in. This learning gap will get larger with time (Oketch et al 2020).

Private markets could improve access both in terms of enrolment, if it allows communities to overcome distrust and encourage families to enrol in schools, and in terms of linguistic access to curriculum if teaching can be delivered in students mother tongue. This would also improve the quality of learning, as more children would be able to make learning gains by accessing the curriculum more easily. In larger communities consumer choice and competition should allow for the maintenance of quality as consumers should be able to go elsewhere. Finally, private schools do not have to be for profit, they can be run as socially motivated schools (Pal & Saha, 2019), this could bring the costs of attendance down further, although there may be less incentives to establish schools in the first place. Education is important for securing citizenship values, but the challenge remains of uniting diverse groups. Anderson’s (2016) study of nationalism suggests that one way to achieve this could be through centrally administered higher education institutions that allow individuals who have been schooled in their own communities to meet and together develop a shared understanding of what it means to be South Sudanese, like the model adopted in Eritrea (Bereketeab 2020).

Conclusion

This essay set out to answer the question: can the expansion of private schooling in South Sudan serve to improve access, efficiency, quality, and equity in basic education? It is argued that it can, at least initially. While the government is currently unable to provide access to education, private markets should be encouraged for the societal returns of education to be realised. These returns to creating a stable society based on common shared values need to be prioritised.

Properly supported through vouchers and loans, families can make choices in the marketplace which will award some level of quality to the education received. The challenge is to ensure efficiency and equity. As the government becomes financially solvent and stable it can begin the process of producing education and replace the private markets. Clearly, as described above, in South Sudan we have a scarcity not just of schools as resources for learning but also finance to fund education. It may be more efficient to simply finance as opposed to build schools and supply teachers who may not speak the same language as the communities they serve. There will be high costs of production in terms of the materials needed to build schools and train teachers needed in different languages which will reduce the rate of return. These principles of productive efficiency would suggest that encouraging grass roots education initiatives in communities would get maximum education output for inputs.

If productive efficiency can be improved and consumption of education is improved, then we also improve allocative efficiency. This system would be a pareto improvement because all individuals would have a better chance of accessing education. A government-imposed system with a single national language as the method of instruction may advantage some groups over others, this would not be a pareto improvement, quite the opposite.

To avoid market imperfections and market failures the government would need to ensure that all schools are accessible and help parents financially to place their children in school. This can be done through vouchers for families and encouraging entrepreneurship to set up community schools. These do not need to be run for profit. Private schooling can overcome both issues if embedded in communities and provided by members of those communities. Private schooling does not need to be exclusive if the government can find methods to finance for all.

References

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Categories
Coordination

Whole school support for EAL learners

Originally posted on July 10, 2018 @ 10:30 am

One of the exercises on my online DPC course had the participants looking at IB research. I had a look at this summary article and I thought what I read warranted further reflection.

The summary highlights what I have mentioned in previous blog posts, that there is an agreement in the academic literature  that there is a specific academic language of school and that this is different from general language style:

There is a general consensus in the literature that there exists a specific style of speaking and writing which is appropriate for the school context of academic learning. Although researchers and theorists disagree on the exact nature of this language style, it is widely accepted that students who are learning in a second language require support in acquiring the academic language of the classroom

This could arguably highlight the concepts of BICS and CALPS identified by Jim Cummins and which I have written about here and here. Writing about EAL instruction in biology teaching has been one of the focusses of this blog and reflects my thinking and reflection around school practices that best support EAL teaching.

Teaching

It is important that teachers are aware of the difference between academic and “general” language and take individual responsibility to instruct their EAL students sufficiently in the language of their academic subject when working at an advanced level. EAL “specialists” may be able to support with instruction at times, but they don’t necessarily have the technical expertise to have a strong enough grasp of subject-specific terminology and concepts to fill in the gaps left by teachers who maybe aren’t aware of these differences.

For example, I teach biology in y12-13/g11-12. This subject (like all subjects at this level) has a highly specific language. One that even native speakers struggle with when first encountering the subject at those grades. When I first was exposed to the distinction between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells at A Level, I had to repeatedly commit to memory what these terms meant.

I could understand easily that one had a nucleus, and the other didn’t but I still had to learn the distinction. The point is, this relied on me knowing what a nucleus was and developing my understanding further.

An EAL student may have to then learn what a nucleus is, either by translating from the knowledge they already possess in their mother tongue or depending on their academic background may have no conception of this in their own tongue.

An EAL specialist may or not be able to help them unpack these words depending on their own expertise – it is highly unlikely that any teacher without a biology background would understand immediately the distinction between these two types of cells and therefore would perhaps be limited in the support that they could give.

In order to provide effective instruction in the academic language needed for success in the content areas, teachers must be prepared to integrate academic language teaching into the teaching of the disciplines (Bunch, 2013; Heritage, Silva and Pierce, 2007; Wong-Fillmore and Snow, 2000). High-quality professional development programmes targeting academic language instruction can result in improvements in student performance (Kim et al., 2011; Anstrom et al., 2010; Dicerbo, Anstrom, Baker and Rivera, 2013).

The problem here is that many schools in my experience (which is limited) simply run a training session for staff (maybe on BICS and CALPS) but offer very little in terms of helping subject teachers develop practical skills in terms of language teaching of their subject.

Even less so, do schools spend time educating parents on these issues. I remain surprised by how many parents think they can switch there child from one academic language to another in upper secondary and not understand the difficulties this might pose for their child.

Assessment

Data from this report shows that many schools will assess students level of English at the point of entry but do no follow up to that assessment

The survey results indicate that when schools are assessing the proficiency of second language students on an ongoing basis, they are doing so using appropriate measures. However, almost half of the schools which responded to the question (45%) provide no language proficiency assessment beyond initial screening for identification. This is potentially problematic in cases where teachers require ongoing information about students’ language proficiency in order to be able to provide effective support.

How can language learning be supported if there is no formative and summative assessment of a students progress to date.

So what would an effective policy for supporting EAL students look like?

I strongly believe that the best support for EAL students in the final years of secondary/high school will come from their classroom teachers. This based on the belief that these individuals are the experts in their subject and, having had a high level of academic training within their subject, will be best placed to understand the academic language norms of vocab, grammar and style or discussion unique to their subject area.

I also believe that these subject teachers may not initially be all that familiar with the needs of EAL students and should, therefore, receive ongoing support and training from specialists. These specialists would best be represented as individuals from the same department who have studied the subject at some depth.

It may be helpful to have these subject EAL specialists associated with an EAL support department comprising EAL generalists and subject-specific specialists in EAL instruction across the whole school. This department would be responsible for delivering training to teachers in the community which help them gain an understanding of EAL concepts like BICS/CALPS and tier 1, 2 and 3 words.

Teachers would have access to high-quality ongoing training. This would have to:

  • Have elements of direct instruction to get teachers familiar with some of the general principles in EAL teaching.
  • Have elements of flexibility that allowed teachers to continuously develop in this area as their needs allow – perhaps providing ongoing “clinics” where teachers can bring questions to the EAL specialists.

Schools needs to provide effective assessment measures for EAL development:

  • Initial assessment of a student’s needs and abilities to decide on what strategy of support to put in place. This needs to subject specific as well as general. For example in biology, I may have all students take a vocabulary test which includes tier 3 words but also tier 2 words like yield and coolant – it is important to assess each students understanding relative to one another.
  • Ongoing language assessment within subjects delivered by subject teachers – this may mean that students take vocabulary tests on specific vocabulary throughout the year. This should be done in such a way that the performance of all students can be compared and so

It is not acceptable to admit students into the higher grades of secondary school if they don’t have a good grasp of tier 2 vocabulary and the school isn’t willing to place resources into developing those students language skills. Neither is it acceptable to simply except classroom practitioners to differentiate down so far for these students who are placed in exam classes without additional support.

In addition the school needs to work proactively to educate its parent community about these issues if they exist.

 

Categories
Books Personal

A reflection on climate strikes

climate people street weather
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

Global Student Climate Strikes 2019

While reading Naomi Klein’s On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal and her description of the global student climate protests I was reminded of the reaction on Twitter of some of the educators and people I follow, which was quite disapproving of the strikes, like the post below:

Naomi Klein articulates very well why students wanted to strike: climate change presents such a pressing and dangerous situation, one that is very likely to be world altering, and that presents the very real possibility that for school age children there may not be a world with jobs and the life we know it in the future. If you know your future is is f****d, what is the point in studying for it? Klein, quoting Thunberg writes:

“Why should we be studying for a future that soon may be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future? … What is the point of learning facts….when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly means nothing to our politicians and our society?”

Klein (2020) On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal pg11

Teachers like Birbalsingh are focussed on their fight to create solid educational outcomes that they are sometimes not aware of the larger picture. Indeed, we could expect Toby Young, a climate change skeptic to take the view that students shouldn’t be protesting, after all from his position there is no justification for the strikes because climate change isn’t real. However, students striking to try to protect their futures, is just as important and urgent as studying at school to protect those futures. It is a shame that society has let them down to the point where they need to sacrifice their education in order to protest.

Greg Ashman writes along similar lines to Birbalsingh’s views in this post, although at greater length. And while what he writes echoes some of what Klein writes about in her book – the need for climate action to be driven by mass mobilization across societal groups for example – Ashman gets it wrong when he writes:

In this light, British school kids skipping school on a Friday to make vague demands that the government declare a ‘climate emergency’ does not really cut it. It is not like miners or nurses going on strike. It’s not really a ‘strike’ at all because nobody is inconvenienced and nobody loses any money. The only potential losers from a withdrawal of student labour are the students themselves, although this will depend greatly on the quality of the education that they have left behind.

https://gregashman.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/skipping-school-to-save-the-world/ accessed 16/11/2020

Yes, the strike is not like a miners strike. Miners damaged their own income at the time of striking. They did this to try to protect their livelihoods. But I disagree with Ashman’s analysis. Students are trying to protect their future livelihoods, when none of the adults around them, who supposedly care about their futures seems to be doing anything about it. Ashman also misses the point that the climate strike is also a strike against free market capitalism (not capitalism itself – just the free market kind). If all students around the world went on strike they would be damaging that system as whole if they do not get educated because there would be a much more limited market to participate in in future. Remember that it is this free market system that is prime driver of climate change.

UK Remembrance Day Strike 2020

In the UK there is a yearly ritual of paying respects to those members of the Armed Forces that have perished in conflict most notably in WWI and WWII.

This year commentators were outraged by an extinction rebellion climate change protest at the Cenotaph. Despite the fact that one of the protestors was an ex-service man, media outlets claimed that this was an “insult” to the fallen.

Firstly, it strikes (no pun intended) me as ironic. While the day is a space for private reflection – members of the armed forces remember colleagues who have lost their lives in recent conflicts, the public uses this day, supposedly, to remember the fallen precisely because they fought for freedom and the rights it entails – like the right to protest.

Remembrance day serves as an opportunity to reflect on freedom, justice, and, so the story goes, by doing so we remember the importance of peace. My father would argue that remembrance day keeps us from fighting in Europe because we remember what a sheer waste of life it was.

Conviently it doesn’t stop us from bombing countries far away from here. We are happy to do that for oil.

Today we seem to have become obsessed with the ritual of remembrance day. But what are we actually remembering?

To me, staging a protest on the day of remembrance seems to actually be a way of actively honoring that sacrifice – you are actively exercising your right that was protected by the sacrifice of others. If you take issue with protests, are you really honoring what the dead died for?

When the protestors are claiming that “climate change means war” they are not making a metaphorical statement. They are highlighting the very real concerns that climate change will drive conflict.

You may argue that it wasn’t appropriate at the event, but what you are really saying is that what is important here is not the principle we are supposed to remember but instead the shallow, banal nationalism, that such events can be seen to support – the glorification of war and the feeding of the narrative that Britain is Great because she is more X, Y and Z than other nations.

As Naomi Klein writes:

“Honoring the dead begins with telling the truth”

Klein (2020) On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal pg255

Climate change will cause more war.

Climate change will cause more suffering.

We are already seeing it in Syria where drought caused the migration of farmers from the rural areas into the cities and sparked the unrest that led to the war and the migrations that have been so bothersome to many in the UK.

Climate change will affect geopolitics and could lead to more international tensions and conflicts.

I can think of no better way to honor the dead than trying to make society aware of its own hypocrisy. We are happy to remember the sacrifice that our heroes make but unwilling to face up to the problems our international actions cause both today and yesterday.

Categories
Coordination Personal Resources

NPQSL project: IBDP Curriculum Coherence

In January 2019, after starting a new job in China in September 2018, I began my NPQSL through UCL IOE’s Beijing Cluster. I guess I am a glutton for punishment. Not only had we uprooted the family and moved from Switzerland to China with our two daughters, to a new continent, city, house and jobs, I just had to undertake a large CPD project!

My job was a new role for me, and, while I felt very prepared for it, the challenges of adjusting professionally and personally to a whole new culture were significant. Reflecting now, going through my project and thinking about everything I achieved last academic year, despite such challenges, I am proud and that somewhat alleviates the shame I have been feeling this week over being made redundant.

Anyway, as I was scouting around for ideas for my NPQSL project, I could not find or connect with another IBDP Coordinator who had done the training, which is a UK qualification but open to (some) international schools too. Therefore I have decided to share a version of it on my TES shop for free (like all my resources that are slowly being populated to the site).

You can find my NPQSL project and appendices through the link below and you will also find my assessors feedback to go with it. I scored 20/28 which is the passing mark. Not the best score I have ever achieved, but I am pleased to have made it through despite all the other things going on in my work and personal life at the time.

I hope that it can help someone else when they are struggling with their own project.

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/ibdp-npqsl-project-and-feedback-completed-feb-2020-12306245

Categories
Personal

A COVID-19 adventure

On February 3rd 2020, our school closed almost without warning. My family had left home on January 24th in order to take a weeks holiday by the coast in Vietnam with my parents in law who had been visiting us since just before my birthday.

On the last day before the holiday I had attended a meeting where we were told that there was an 80% chance that the campus would not open. By that time there were 5 cases of the virus in our city and the news of the outbreak in Wuhan had been on people’s minds all week.

The day we flew, all of us were already paranoid so that we didn’t leave the house for the day and wore masks all the way to the airport and on the flight to Vietnam.

As the holiday week progressed, we were told that the school would be closed for two weeks but staff needed to be back in school order to deliver online learning. This later evolved to an acceptance that no one would be allowed on campus – a rule brought in by the municipal government.

During the weeks holiday in the last week of January, the situation in China appeared to get worse and worse. We were glued to the BBC news app and watched as the UK FCO closed the local consulates and upgraded their travel advice all the way to do not travel unless it is essential.

Towards the end of that  holiday my wife and I were already worried about going back. With the change in the advice from the UK FCO, the clearly escalating situation, and the stories we were hearing from friends about food being cleared out of the supermarkets, we didn’t feel comfortable heading back but were worried about the stance our school was taking in initially insisting we come back.

Eventually the decision was taken out of our hands as our return flight to China was cancelled as the Vietnamese government took the decision to suspend all flights to and from China.

And so began our first 7 weeks of teaching and parenting away from home and away from school. During that initial 7 weeks we moved from Vietnam to Thailand because our Vietnamese visa was due to expire soon after our holiday and we knew we had 30 days visa free in Thailand as British nationals. Surely 30 days would be enough?

After 30 days we found we were still not going back and so we moved back to Vietnam after some issues surrounding visas which meant an aborted early morning trip to the airport in Chiang Mai.

I am sure that anyone reading this who lives in a house where both parents are working full time and have two children under 5 and has any experience of isolation/social distancing under the current COVID-19 pandemic will instantly understand the pressures that this situation presented. How do you both work full time from home and also look after small children that need constant supervision?

The added difficulty for our family in those first few weeks was that we didn’t know when we would be asked to come back for school reopening. It seems silly to write now, but at the time we thought we would be back to school in a few weeks at most. We didn’t want to be too far from our schools timezone so that we could stay in sync with the school timetable; if we went back to the UK we would conceivably have to teach at night and parent in the day. We also didn’t want to return to our school city because of the FCO advice and the stories we were hearing about the lockdown procedures being implemented in the city.

This left us planning week by week where we going to live as well as having to full time parent and work. Some weeks worked better than others, my wife and I finding a routine for ourselves and the children, even eating in the same local eateries for lunch and dinner. But that very much depended on the amenities that you found yourself with after making a decision to live somewhere based on booking.com info!

This continued until early March. All the while the disease appeared to be limited to China, we weren’t expecting a global pandemic based on what we were reading and our school began making plans to get teachers who were stranded outside of China back.

It is amazing how quickly the situation evolved in early March and it’s also incredible how different the picture looks with hindsight. In order to remind myself of the situation I was in I wrote much of this post on the plane back to the UK on March 25th.

In early March, we were informed that the school was planning to reopen and that staff who were not in their home country should aim to come back by the end of March. In order to see how the re-entry process went, the school Principal, who had also been out of China, was to return first and if that was successful the Site Based Leadership Team were to return followed by other “third country staff”.

After a successful return to China where the Principal picked up a direct flight to Chongqing from Bangkok with Lion Air my wife and I booked passage on the same route along with some other colleagues who were also stranded in “third countries”. At the time, in the middle of March, we were living in Hoi An in Vietnam and felt that we could easily get back to Bangkok from there to pick up this direct flight. Our Principal was also able to be picked up at the airport by school HR and taken straight to their apartment to begin their 14 day home quarantine.

Soon after however, it was clear that other staff were having some issues over their flights and it turned out their flights on the same route had been cancelled. Ours were still scheduled as initially Lion Air cancelled flights only to 31st March on that Monday (we had booked on the Sunday night) but by the Friday of that week (20th March) they had expanded that to 30th April.

So the Principal’s experience quickly became obsolete and the plan of having a guinea pig to see how re-entry procedures to China went became obsolete. The Principals return turned out to be the smoothest and easiest of all those who returned because the situation changed so rapidly in the last two weeks of March, when it became clear that the COVID-19 epidemic had expanded into a pandemic.

After our Lion Air flights were cancelled, the only options from Bangkok were via Chengdu or via Guangzhou. There were no flights to China from Vietnam since our original return flights from our holiday on 2nd Feb got cancelled.

When you are living it, a week can be a long time but when you think back on it it can seem very short. Memories become compressed and it’s easy to forget the feelings of anxiety that you live with in slow time when everyday you worry that the situation may change.

That week after we booked our China flights on the Sunday on the same route as the Principal, it seemed quite natural to be able to fly on 27th March so we could have our second week of quarantine in the Easter holiday.

My wife and I had already learned how difficult it was to plan and teach our own classes, deliver our eldest daughters online learning and parent both of the children well all at the same time, so when discussing our return home to China we knew that the only way we could manage a home 14 day quarantine without the distractions of any outside space was to plan the quarantine period in the holidays. We had expressed this desire as soon as we were asked to come back because we had already been having the conversations.

Now in light of our current actions I am sure that some will interpret our reluctance to fly earlier as us not wanting to go back at all. This is not the case but we felt at the time that we had to make the best decision for our two children.

It’s hard to get your feet in someone’s shoes. A colleague expressed concern by telling me why they thought our plan to quarantine at home during the Easter holidays was a bad idea because they felt we wouldn’t get a break. It was hard for them to understand why quarantining in the holidays was going to be the best break we could get! It meant that our children would benefit from not having two parents constantly torn by the demands of their needs the needs of the school. It meant that we would only have one week of work where we were trapped in the house with no outside space and no where to really separate work and play.

Being responsible continually for other people and placing their needs above your own, continually is a very hard thing to understand until you have had to do it.

Two days after booking our initial return flights from Bangkok to China we found the same airline had cancelled our colleagues flights on the same route. This was Tuesday 17th March, only a week after we were told the school plan to get everyone back and four days after the Principal had successfully made it back on the same route.

On Wednesday 18th March we were told by our landlady in Hoi An, that airlines were cancelling flights out of Vietnam. She was concerned about us being able to leave the country. Remember that there were no direct flights from Vietnam to China? Well now there seemed that there was going to be no flights anywhere else.

Faced with the looming realisation that we might get stuck in Vietnam we found our anxiety rising. Particularly as we already had an exit flight back to China from Bangkok. That evening that we got the news from our landlady, we booked an air Asia flight for the coming Saturday from Da Nang to Bangkok.

The next morning we woke up to find that flight cancelled. This was Thursday morning 19th March.

More airlines closing. More panic. We found tickets for a flight leaving to Bangkok a day earlier – leaving on Friday 20th March. It was more dear but we had passed counting coins at this stage. This was also the day that our Chinese nanny, after waiting for weeks for us to come back, resigned so she could find other work.

There’s a pandemic. You are separated from your home nation and from the nation you are resident in. Governments are making last minute announcements. Airlines are cancelling flights. It is hard to stay on top of the information. You live with anxiety constantly about the changes, about what is going to happen. This is on top of already emotionally, mentally and financially challenging “home-work” circumstances that we had lived with for 7 weeks already.

The next morning, Friday 20th March, we woke up to the news from the FCO that Thailand was bringing in new immigration requirements. Our flight was that day and we had no way of meeting the new requirements. We went to the airport with bated breath. Unsure if we would be able to check in. unsure if we would have the correct paperwork. Unsure if we could immigrate into Thailand.

Thankfully checking in went smoothly , although that entire check in procedure and exit from Vietnam was one of the tensest moments of my life. At the airport every flight, bar ours, was cancelled.

When we arrived in Thailand we received news that our Lion Air flight on 2nd April had also been cancelled. After panicing to get out of Vietnam back to Thailand to be able to get our flight back to China we no longer had a flight back to China.

We couldn’t wait around any longer hoping things would work out. We could see that the sand was shifting around us. The travel picture was changing. Immigration requirements were changing. Information you had on one day was obsolete the next.

If we booked a flight there was no guarantee that it would go. Plus because of the increasing expense of flights, we needed to trade off economical flights with leaving as soon as possible, before the situation changed further.

A delay of 24 hours would push prices up further. A delay of 24 hours would leave us more exposed to the risk of sudden changes in flight schedules and immigration policies.

We seriously felt at risk of being trapped in Thailand with our two small children during a global pandemic.

This was a real risk that we couldn’t afford after 8 weeks already of living out of bags while parenting and working.  We had initially packed for a one week holiday. We needed to get home and we needed support with the children so we could focus on work.

We also had no clarity on what the quarantine procedures would entail for us. Our Principal has been able to go straight home and quarantine at home, which would be manageable if we could do it in the Easter holidays but as we saw over that weekend, that rapidly changed. With no direct flights back to our city, there was an increasing chance that teachers would be held in quarantine in hotels in other cities that they flew into. it wasn’t clear who would be responsible for these costs.

We booked refundable flights back to the UK and waited. Over that weekend we began to see the challenges of no direct routes. Flights were available via Guangzhou, Nanning and Chengdu. These were clearly different and by the time recommendations came to not go via Chengdu people had already booked flights on them. Some colleagues ended up being quarantined in a hotel there. We also heard that families were to be separated for the two weeks with the children being quarantined with their mother. By Friday 27th March it was clear that home quarantine was not an option.

It was not the time to wait. We had to make decisions based on the best data we had available. In the future you may look back and think you did the “right” thing, or you may look back and think you didn’t. In the here and now there is just no way of knowing. Often when you look back your perception of the events is changed so it’s important to be clear with yourself in the present moment what your reasons are.

On the plane home on Wednesday 25th March I wrote:

Sitting on this plane I still feel anxious. I am relieved too. Relieved to be getting my kids back into the UK where their grandparents want to see them. Back to the UK where I have been amazed at the deep support network and its ability to collectively find a solution. But I am anxious. For me the anxiety has now changed. No longer anxious about getting trapped. I’m anxious about what my employer will say. I’m anxious that I’ll be jobless and that I’ll lose my bonus. I’m anxious that my actions will damage my career. I’m even anxious that I can’t now access the internet, so accustomed I have become to reading the BBC news hourly, sending and receiving messages like never before. Constantly connected in my hours of panic, I’m now unused to being disconnected.

The day after we returned the UK the Chinese government announced that it was closing its borders to all foreigners except diplomats, a sensible thing to do when individuals and companies were disregarding the governmental advice to limit travel to essential travel only.

On Thursday 26th March the Thai authorities brought in stronger lockdown procedures including road blocks and checkpoints. There was a possibility of further flight cancellations and stronger shut down measures. Those who waited may be forced into being stranded for a long time. If we hadn’t booked our flights back to the UK and rebooked to China we would have been stuck in Thailand and facing the national lockdown there. I am sure we would have managed but it wouldn’t have been great for our two little ones.

Unfortunately, I think that often teachers and school leaders become so focussed on learning, that losing learning time can be the worst thing in the world. Forward planning becomes narrow and very short term, long term planning almost obsolete, or very rare. Maybe it’s worry about accountability to parents. Maybe an inability to think, plan and articulate long term scenarios. Maybe it’s a lack of training.

In this scenario, I wonder if more would have been achieved long term if more time had been taken to adequately train staff in the short term and plan for the long term instead of assuming it would all be over in a few weeks.

Perhaps we should have had a short, medium and long term plan.

It’s easy to say that in hindsight though.