Education quality is world’s concern----scholar
by MIKE CHIPALASA - Saturday, April 05, 2008 - 14:19:28

A France-based distinguished educationist says plummeting standards in education quality are a global concern and has asked respective countries to engage robust and rigorous research methodologies to help find long-term solutions to it. Demus Makuwa, acting coordinator for the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) said this on Wednesday during a pre-consultative meeting with deputy minister of education responsible for basic education, Olive Masanza, in Lilongwe. SACMEQ is a consortium of ministries of education in Southern and Eastern Africa that carries out research in education quality and learning achievement apart from conducting training courses for education planners and researchers. Makuwa who is also a Resident Fellow at the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) under UNESCO is in the country to consult with Malawi’s minister of education on the agenda for the September, 2008 SACMEQ management committee meeting for education ministers in east and southern Africa which Malawi will host. "The quality of education is of great concern not only in Malawi but the whole world, it is a global issue and countries need to undertake research to help bridge the existing knowledge gap," said Makuwa. He said his organization was tasked with the responsibility to evaluate education quality by looking at issues affecting pupils in terms of their family background, the teacher’s level of education and pedagogical experience, and management skills of the school’s head teacher. Makuwa, however, refused to shed more light on issues that were likely to be tabled during his consultation with Malawi’s minister, saying doing so would be pre-empting issues but he indicated the consultation process would hinge on how to achieve education quality in pupils so that they could compete at a global level. He also refused to comment on whether his organization had done anything on Malawi’s education following last year’s MSCE leakage, saying SACMEQ does not involve itself in national accreditation such as grades but rather national assessment systems to do with quality. On her part, Masanza saluted Makuwa’s coming which she said would help identify some of the critical education issues to be tabled during the September meeting. Masanza further said problems beseting the basic education sector, which she noted were now a global issue; require a holistic approach in ensuring that observable results were achieved. Asked on why SACMEQ decided to host the meeting in Malawi, Makuwa said it was a rotational arrangement among member countries to be hosting such meetings after every two years adding the consortium decided at its previous meeting to hold this year’s meeting in the chairmanship country. Malawi is the current chair of the management committee of the consortium. The September high-level meeting comes at a time when the country is recuperating from a massive 2007 MSCE leakage which forced government to order a re-sit of five papers that found their way on the black market for sale. The SACMEQ Assembly of ministers of education which meets every two years is the highest decision making body of the organization. So far, SACMEQ which partners UNESCO’s IIEP in implementing its training and research programmes has completed two large-scale cross-national assessment studies on the quality of education between 1995 and1999 and 2000-2004. The third SACMEQ cross-national assessment project spanning 2005-2009, however, is nearing completion and includes assessment of literacy, numeracy and health knowledge of pupils in addition to a wealth of information about home backgrounds and other school characteristics. The consortium, which began in 1995, is a network of 15 ministries of education from Botswana , Kenya , Lesotho , Malawi , Mauritius , Mozambique , Namibia , Seychelles , South Africa , Swaziland , Tanzania , Zanzibar , Uganda , Zambia and Zimbabwe .

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