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Towards excellence in education through JICA

by Kalyani S. Lakshman

There has been widespread concern in Sri Lankan educational circles about the education in certain disciplines in the science stream, particularly mathematics. Many have been the policies and projects implemented to improve conditions of teaching and learning in these subject areas.

The project under consideration was launched with the assistance of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in August 2003 with the explicit objective of improving the standards of Science and Mathematics Education at primary and secondary levels.

After a year of its implementation, it is now time for us to make a post-project evaluation of what we have achieved through this project and what we have learnt from the related activities.

It was an interesting project, which aimed at the achievement of its objectives through the introduction of some relevant and useful principles of the Japanese way of management into project schools. As a pilot project, it was implemented in only twenty-five selected schools. Devi Balika Vidyalaya was among these twenty-five.

The following is a brief objective look at the successes and failures of, and lessons learnt from, the project as implemented in Devi Balika Vidyalaya. Its implementation was facilitated by the advice and assistance of the JICA study team, which consisted of some officials from the Ministry of Education, National Institute of Education and a number of JICA experts.

A team consisting of the Principal and a few teachers and a few parents prepared the Project proposal for implementation in Devi Balika under the guidance of the JICA study team. It is noteworthy that there was the school's own involvement in the Project from its very inception, namely the proposal preparation stage itself. As a result, the project was developed in such a way as to be able to address problems of particular relevance to the school.

Devi Balika has subsequently implemented it with a genuine sense of 'project ownership.'

The Quality Education (QE) Circle has been the principal institutional mechanism used in the implementation of this JICA assisted project toward excellence in science and mathematics education.

As a compulsory project requirement, one of the QE circles formed in a project school had to concentrate on the implementation of the so-called 5S activities. The 5S concept emanating from Japanese management practices are now quite familiar in the general management literature - the 5 S's standing for seiri (removal of unwanted things), seithon (rearrangement of remaining items), seiso (proper cleaning), seiketsu (standardisation) and shitsuke (continuous practice of these activities). In the implementation of its project, Devi Balika Vidyalaya has formed four QE circles, focusing on the achievement of following objectives:

1. Promotion of the reading habit among students by developing the school library;

2. Development and implementation of 5S practices within school premises;

3. Development of human and physical resources and teaching learning material for science teaching in grades 6-13;

4. Improvement of facilities for mathematics education in grades 6-13.

The overall management and control of these four QE circles was placed in the hands of SEIKA (School Education Initiative Kaizen Activities), headed by the school principal.

It was a condition in the JICA project guidelines that the Directors of Education and Master Teachers should become members of this committee since these personnel are responsible for guiding and supporting school principals in matters of education imparted from schools.

Devi Balika Vidyalaya has attempted to make SEIKA representative of the entire school community by inviting members of the School Development Society, the Past Pupils Association and a few school well-wishers into SEIKA. Looking at its composition, SEIKA appears impressive but the support received from educational authorities in it to the furtherance of JICA project work at Devi Balika was not to the level of expectations, perhaps caused by their busy work schedules.

SEIKA of Devi Balika, with its four QE circles, had to be very active and alert for the achievement of maximum efficiency in their activities. The KAIZEN suggestion system has been introduced in order to secure maximum participation of the school community in the bottom-up approach that has been advocated and adopted. KAIZEN system was completely new to the school community and, in the early stages, the response it elicited from, for example, the students was not at all promising.

When students were given the opportunity to make suggestions for improvement of the teaching learning environment, they were initially reluctant to articulate their opinions freely about problems and solutions.

This reflected the well-known characteristics of our students as being diffident and rather backward, perhaps for fear that such free and frank expression of personal opinion would offend a person or persons in authority. Clearly, the school authorities had to patiently promote such independent attitudes among students in order to pull them out of the conventional mould.

The JICA project in Devi Balika has been able to gradually change student behaviour. The persons responsible for project implementation have explained to students how small changes, added together, would amount to large positive changes. As students, they were told, they could bring about such small changes through their individual efforts.

Such consistent persuasion has made students begin to innovatively think about problems affecting them in their school and to suggest their own solutions to those problems. It is indeed refreshing to note that the first KAIZEN suggestion implemented in Devi Balika under the JICA project originated from a Grade 6 student.

Her suggestion was to make a small and stable ladder available in the library to enable small students to reach books kept on upper racks. No doubt, this was a simple suggestion but something ignored by school authorities until then. This child was rewarded and her suggestion immediately implemented.

The KAIZEN suggestion system has gradually become popular and the KAIZEN boxes placed at several places in school have produced a number of suggestions coming from the grass roots, which were implemented for improvement of conditions in the school.

We have been practising the 5S concept at Devi Balika even before the JICA involvement.

Therefore the concept itself was not new to students and teachers. However it is the JICA project which got the entire school interested in the practical aspects of the 5S system. These practical aspects involved team work, giving KAIZEN suggestions, participation in SEIKA meetings etc.

It must be noted that these activities improved the quality of the QE circle activities already being implemented in the school. For example under the 5S system chemicals in the science laboratories were labelled and rearranged.

This helped making practical lessons more effective. Having said that it must be noted that lot more can and need to be done under the 5S concept before 5S becomes a habit or second nature.

If the 5S practices are adopted solely because of insistence of school authorities, then obviously it will not be sustainable. Instead, in the ideal situation when 5S 'goes into their blood', we would expect everybody to be individually conscious of the relevance of 5S values in whatever they are doing. In other words, an attitudinal change must take place.

In any organisation there will be a minority behaving as if they are not going to make this change.

Intensive awareness programs and workshops for the entire school community could address problems like this. Such activities would enable any institution to achieve results which would benefit the whole society. My overall impression is that the 5S system has influenced the school culture at Devi Balika in a very positive manner.

At Devi Balika we have been using different methods to assess the work done by teachers. However student assessment was not one of these methods. However under the guidance of JICA study team and learning from the examples set by other pilot projects, we too have introduced student assessment of teaching.

The teachers have begun to appreciate that student assessment would help them improve their teaching and would make them better mentors. For example, these assessments have encouraged teachers to regularly update themselves in regard to subject specific as well as more general matters like computer literacy, ability to use multimedia tools etc. With regard to the latter, the JICA project trained five of our teachers who in turn trained their colleagues.

Overall effect of student assessment has been that teachers now have a better measure of what the students expect of them. Also the new assessment method has fostered better student-teacher rapport.

With the development of resources, both physical and human, achieved under the JICA project, we have been able to produce better results both in science and mathematics. Devi Balika students have achieved almost 100% results in the Ordinary Level examination over a number of years. OL results would not, therefore, be an objective measure of our performance before and after the adoption of the 5S practice under the auspices of the JICA project.

We have therefore, analysed marks in term tests to examine the educational impact of this project. There has been a remarkable improvement in students' term test marks after the effective implementation of project activities.

It is fair to give at least a substantial part of credit for this achievement to the JICA project as no other significant change, likely to have affected student performance at terms tests, occurred during this period. It is also fair to say that the JICA Project has motivated most of us to be innovative.

It is worth noting in this regard the production by our students 14 compacts discs in science and mathematics using the improved facilities in the computer laboratory and the multimedia room.

The Advanced Level students in the science stream, with the guidance of their teachers, have prepared transparencies and slides for classroom teaching. A number of workbooks have been prepared in respect of science subjects for both Ordinary and Advanced levels. Practical cards are being prepared for the use of Advanced level classes and these will make the lessons more interesting and less time consuming.

To conclude, the JICA project has brought many benefits to Devi Balika and I am sure, to rest of the schools associated with the pilot stage of the program.

The challenge before us, Devi Balika and the other beneficiary schools, is that of improving further on the achievements gained. The educational authorities have the responsibility of spreading the lessons of these pilot schools to thousands of schools in the country. Whether the Japanese authorities will provide assistance to carry out similar project activities in a set of new pilot schools is not known.

This would make the responsibility falling on the shoulders of local educational authorities even more onerous. There is a notable lack of success in many foreign assistance projects in Sri Lanka, in terms of the sustainability of the good activities such projects have commenced. My sincere hope is that this would not be the fate of the JICA pilot project for the improvement in the standards of Science and Mathematics Education at primary and secondary levels in Sri Lanka.

(The writer was Principal, Devi Balika Vidyalaya)

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