It will be no longer business as usual in the school arena. Parents may soon take turns to visit schools to check whether teachers reported to work and are actually teaching.
And the random patrols by school heads in classrooms during learning hours to monitor quality of teaching may be tightened if the teachers’ employer adopts the new proposal.
A new Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report has proposed radical accountability measures that would keep teachers in school and guarantee teaching beyond the conventional performance appraisals.
Part of this will be dispatching staff-room colleagues to freely pop in class during lessons to listen in and give feedback on curriculum delivery.
The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) is presently implementing a Performance Contracting (PC) and Teacher Performance Appraisal and Development (TPAD) to improve quality learning in public schools.
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Traditional evaluation
The tools also check teacher absenteeism and whether children are effectively taught based on curriculum.
The 2017 GEM report on accountability, however, says that in addition to the traditional evaluation reports, more measures should be used to hold teachers to account.
The report released last week finds that no single measurement strategy can capture the full range of teacher performance or the composition of qualities important for effective teaching.
“It is critical, therefore, to use as many complementing sources of information on teacher performance as possible to produce more accurate evaluations,” reads the report.
If TSC adopts the recommendations, the Kenyan teacher will have enhanced monitoring sessions to curb absenteeism, incompetence and improve teaching and learning.
The report proposes community involvement in monitoring of teachers work and the school-based approach of observation where tutors assess colleagues.
The GEM report finds that there is growing awareness that communities and parents can play an important role in school and teacher accountability. The report reveals that community-led surveys concerning teachers have been used in several low-income contexts, especially in rural or disadvantaged regions.
However, effectiveness has been hampered by parents dismal involvement in the evaluation process. The Twaweza education report released this year, for instance, faulted parents for being disengaged with the running of schools.
The report said that if parents are not holding schools to account, there is little hope of improving education system.
Another report by Ministry of Education analysing KCSE 2014-2016 revealed that parents contribute largely to failure of their children.
The GEM report now says that parent–teacher meetings are the most basic avenues for parents to participate in academic achievements of children.
“However, they are often infrequent and offer limited opportunity to monitor teaching and learning,” reads the report.
Under this arrangement, the report proposes that representatives of local communities can visit classrooms, to ensure that teachers are present.
However, reliance on parents alone to hold teachers accountable may not be sustainable if poorly implemented.
“In Kenya, for example, gains in learning outcomes from training parents in monitoring and evaluating teachers wore off one year afterwards,” reads the report. The report says teachers’ may fail the community monitoring involvement if it is unclear whom they are accountable to.
“Observations are more likely to improve instruction if the observation form is subject-specific and captures fine-grained practices that can generate actionable feedback,” reads the report.
The report finds that classroom observation is an essential tool of teacher evaluations.
“Observing classroom interactions can capture on-the-spot decision-making, content focus and depth of instruction.”
TSC is already implementing the impromptu visits by head teachers to monitor lessons.
TSC may, however, consider the GEM report proposal that use of teachers’ colleagues to offer a just assessment of teaching and learning is also key.
Performance-based
The report says that formal or informal peer reviews of teaching (PRTs) involve teachers in a given school reviewing their colleagues’ work through a feedback form or checklist.
The PRTs can reduce the time burden on the school head and help ensure observers have relevant pedagogical expertise.
The document finds that peer reviews foster teacher well being, higher job satisfaction, motivation and accountability.
“They can also support professionalism by strengthening teacher collaboration and improving the knowledge base within the profession,” reads the report. Performance Contracting and TPAD report (June 2017) says the tools have eliminated absenteeism and restored discipline among teachers.
“There is commendable improvement in preparations of schemes of work, lesson plans and notes and teaching aids,’ reads the document.
TSC Chief Executive Officer Nancy Macharia says effectiveness of the appraisal tools have led to marked improvement in candidates’ performance.
The 2017 KCPE results released by the Kenya National Examination Council reflected improved grades compared to last year. Some 846 candidates scored 400 marks and above compared to 5,145 last year.
The report, however, cautions that use of performance to determine teachers pay returns mixed results. “Performance-based pay tends to promote unhealthy competition, reduces teacher motivation, and encourages ‘teaching to the test and the neglect’.”
It says that the performance-based pay can also have a detrimental impact on low-performing students as teachers transfer to higher-performing schools.
Even though linking pay to performance is the number one policy solution proposed in the World Bank knowledge products to address teachers’ contribution to education quality, the report has mixed results.
