In Activity 4 of the first challenge of the QA4ODFL course, you identified an educational policy in your context and parties that were involved in formulating that policy.
In this activity:
The Teachers Registration Regulation (TRR) intended to improve quality education by ensuring that all schools in Kiribati are equipped with competent and qualified teachers. Under this TRR, teachers are expected to meet the quality standards in order to be granted a full registration certificate to indicate that they are recognised and certified teachers.
Currently, the full implementation of the TRR faces one of its challenges which is the funding. Teachers are scattered around a dispersed of islands, thus reaching out of the registration for teachers at each island involved a huge amount of money for the Ministry of Education to spend. Given that the Teachers Registration was one of the activities in the Education Sector Strategic Plan 2020-2023 with a target of 100% of teachers to be full registered by the end of 2023, yet the registration of all teachers is constraint with no budget allocation for its full scale implementation. In my opinion, the TRR will not be able to meet its intended goal if the funding still not available.
The PG student’s supervision is not considered in the workload policy, while it is a part of the academic staff who has PG students. It should be considered as an allowance or in the workload. Otherwise, the academic staff will lose their motivation to be engaged in the PG program.
Farid, what is the PG stand for?
Would the problem of reaching out to a distributed teaching workforce in Kiribati be alleviated by using available technology? I am thinking here of online registration.
Indeed, supervision of postgraduate students is a responsibility that requires a lot of time and can lead to staff burnout. However, in a university environment, I don’t think staff should be paid for doing such supervision. Rather, there should be recognition for undertaking such a task when it comes to promotions. What do others think?
Thank you Emphraim for bringing up the use of a technology - online registration for teachers. Yes, that is what the Ministry of Education is looking at as an option, but unfortunately, the online registration is still in the progress of development and it is not yet come to the final stage of completion. Yet the registration online is to be tested or piloted but we are not yet come to this stage unless the technology (online registration system) is available and ready for implementation. In addition, a consultation of the online registration for teachers requires to be done before the teachers are registered online. For the time being, the internet connectivity on the outer-islands is not stable and this is one of the constraints that need to look at when an online registration system is put in place. Because the online registration system has not yet completed and not come to the stage of piloting, so this requires first a reach out to the teachers on every island to carry out a manual registration for all teachers. Also the ESSP 2020-2023 lifespan is due this year 2023, and the registration of teachers have to be completed by end of this year 2023.
If the supervision of post graduate students is clearly stated in the Job description of those who supervise, I think there is no allowance to be provided.
School Resource & Property Management Policy is one of the MoE’s policies in Kiribati. It was created to regulate and monitor the dissemination, use, maintenance and record keeping of the school resources which are provided by the ministry for all students and teachers in Kiribati. The policy was intended to address the recurring loss and damage of school resources.
In my opinion, this policy has not been successful in meeting its goals. Many schools still have no resource management system that the policy clearly requires from all schools. Consequently, resources are still lost or damage without being noticed by the MoE. I believe the failure of the policy is due to the inability of the school leaders to develop their resource management system as the policy requires them to do. I think they need training on how to develop this system.
I think I support your opinion. If the workload policy clearly states and defines the roles and responsibilities of all the posts in the uni including the incentives they will receive for their workload, then I believe it should also do the same to the workload of staff who has PG students. Otherwise, it will be unfair and could lead to de-motivation for some.
Yes, I agreed many school leaders have not doing their roles and responsibilities to take care of the school resources. To my view, the policy should have a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool to be put in place in which a responsible unit in the Ministry of Education should have to implement it effectively. The M&E tool will track the performance of stakeholders (like school leaders) who have been responsible under the policy to determine of how they effective in taking care of the school resources.
I agree that training of school personnel, especially principals on resource management might be a good idea. Also, are the schools sufficiently resourced to implement effective security measures for the resources they have? My experience is in contexts where schools had inadequate resources, important resources like computers, solar equipment and other essential equipment disappeared as soon as they were supplied to schools.
Do you think communities should play a leading role in safeguarding school equipment and resources?
School based management committee (SBMC) is system created to monitor and evaluate the available resources in a given school. The committee consists of some selected community leaders and parents leaded by the school head and some key officers.
Their function is not only to monitor but to look and provide support from around and outside the community for the benefit of the students.
This SBMC is really functioning with little challenges, some of which are environmental factors.
Thank you halliruibrahim for sharing this great idea about the SBMC. I believe the schools in Kiribati also have the similar kind of committee but it is called the School Improvement Planning Committee (SIP committee) and I believe the management of resources is part of their TOR. However, most SIPs are focusing too much on seeking funds for infrastructure development projects and seem to ignore resource monitoring. I think the name of the committee (SIP) should be changed to include the phrase: “resource management” so that the committee and school leaders will be hinted on their roles and responsibility even without reading their TOR. Anyway thank you for the tip.
I agreed that the communities are part of the education system and in the policy they have an important roles and responsibilities. They are the right hand partners of the schools to improve the quality of learning for students. As Tiare mentioned, there is a School Improvement Plan (SIP) Committee for schools that is established for schools at the Primary and Junior Secondary levels on the outer-islands. The SIP Committee members were nominated from the communities to representing the community at which the school is established. In some schools, there are SIP committees that are very active while others are not active. But to my view, most (not all) SIP committees at the Primary Schools are more active than the SIP Committees at the Junior Secondary Schools to carry out their roles and responsibilities.
the problem that the policy was intended to address was discipline
and yes the policy has succeeded in minimizing discipline issues
i totally agree with your opinion as well that school personnel are to be trained in resource management
I totally agree to this as discipline is one of the major problem we lecturers face when it comes to university students in this era