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High school enrolments may not be sufficient. Haiti: a case study
Haiti boasts of 90% enrolment in primary sections, yet learning outcomes are not as desired. A World Bank backed evaluation revealed important outcomes all of which pointed to a need for improving teacher training.
The Right To Education Act, 2009 is touted by many to be the tour de force that has the potential to change the education sector in the country. While the intentions are noble and the act designed to increase enrolments in schools it may not be a reason to rejoice yet as it is not necessary that a high enrolment will necessarily translate into achieving quality education. Let us take a look at Haiti’s example where about 90% of primary school-aged children are enrolled in school.
While the country is still short of universal enrolment, this is a big improvement over the figures just 2 decades ago. However, enrolment is just the initial step as many children will repeat a grade, and about 50% will drop out before completing primary school, leaving the school system without having mastered even basic language and math skills.
Why does participation in school produce so little?
The answer to this question will help Haiti increase the effectiveness of its education system. The Government of Haiti, supported by the World Bank and the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund, conducted classroom observations shed some light on this question. The Stallings classroom observation tool was used where observers sat in on classes in a random sample of 97 schools across Northern Haiti (one of the poorest parts of the country). The results (available here) throw up some interesting insights about what is going on inside Haiti’s classrooms:
Teachers are present and teaching: At 76%, the average time spent on instruction is 10–15 percentage points higher compared to other Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. This verifies the findings of another report which said that teacher absenteeism in this region of Haiti is lower than in other developing countries. Both, low absenteeism and high instruction times are explained in part by the somewhat unique set of incentives Haitian teachers receive — over 80% of primary schools are non-public, where teachers are essentially at-will employees, and potentially have better accountability mechanisms. The picture is the same in public schools, where though job security is higher, assurances of payment are not, which may also motivate teachers to come to work in the hopes of receiving payment.
The teaching methods are ineffective: Most of a teacher’s instructional time is spent on lecturing or eliciting responses in unison from the class, and responses often encouraged repetition and memorization. Observers noted that teachers rarely acknowledged or corrected the many incorrect answers or lack of answers. Such an instructional method has limited effectiveness in teaching young children, the foundational cognitive skills they need to succeed in school.
Language is an issue as well as teaching methods: Here Haiti is facing a unique problem. The mother tongue for most children is Haitian Kreyol and the Government has mandated that reading and writing for the Grade I classes should be exclusively in Kreyol. However, French was nearly 3 times more likely than Kreyol to be the subject matter of the 1stgrade classes observed (34% versus 12%). This is a hurdle in comprehension and learning, for both students and teachers as they lack a mastery of French — only 50% of French reading or writing classes in the IV-VI grades were being taught primarily in French, said the observers.
Consequently, many students are unengaged and not being productive in the classroom: Only about 35% of class time was spent on instruction with all students paying attention, lower than many LAC neighbors, as you can see below.
The rest of the time, at least some students were playing, sleeping, or staring off into space. The study finds that those classes which had a higher time slot with all students engaged also had higher reading skills, suggesting that teachers who are able to engage their students did manage to boost learning.
The path to getting to school itself is full of hurdles like costs (direct and opportunity), other barriers (illness, natural disasters, lack of health and nutrition, etc.), so it is all the more disappointing to know that even after surmounting these odds children don’t often get much out of school. These results clearly point out to the importance of building and sharpening teachers’ skills for effective teaching. The skills would include pedagogical practices and content mastery (specifically language) as a critical component of increasing educational achievement.
The good part is that the government has taken the findings of these observations seriously and with the support of national and international partners, is developing a teacher training policy that could make a difference in learning outcomes if effectively designed. The ‘if’ of implementation is crucial here. Evaluations show that traditional teacher training programs had little impact especially in Haiti where most teachers lack post-secondary degrees (and in many cases, secondary degrees). However, practical, specific, and sustained in-service training can substantially increase the effectiveness of teachers.