Basic education

The project, to be implemented by the Ministry of Education (MED) and a U.S. contractor, has three components: (1) MED institutional strengthening; (2) teacher training; and (3) curriculum development. The project will strengthen the MED by (1) upgrading central planning, administrative, personnel, training, financial, and procurement systems; (2) improving its ability to formulate and implement educational policy, including establishment of a consultative policy mechanism and a study of decentralization to the municipal level; and (3) establishing a computerized management information system. To this end, the project will finance local and overseas training for at least 600 MED employees, national school supervisors, and municipal employees in a wide range of areas, as well as TA, equipment, cars, and bikes. A Basic Education Guide will be developed to set the foundation for the teacher training component. The Guide will contain practical instructions on carrying out child-centered learning activities; 20,000 copies will be distributed. Some 2,800 MED decisionmakers, normal school professors, practice teachers, methodologists, supervisors, parents, and community leaders will be trained in the Guide. The project will also: (1) strengthen existing pre-service teacher training mechanisms such as normal schools; (2) create an in-service training system to work with some 12,000 accredited and unaccredited teachers; (3) train a cadre of 120 Master Teachers (most from private schools) to assist in hands-on nationwide training in the new educational materials developed under the project; (4) develop 40 demonstration schools near municipal training centers and 12 laboratory schools at normal schools for testing new materials, and establish small libraries at both. The final component will strengthen MED"s capacity to develop modular instructional materials. First, as an interim measure, teachers" guides will be developed to enhance the utilization of existing instructional texts. The guides will promote a problemsolving and participatory approach to learning. Second, following detailed specification of grade-level competencies, new instructional materials in language arts, math, and civic education will be developed and tested for grades 1-4. Means of cost recovery on instructional materials (e.g., selling and/or renting texts) will be explored. Ancillary activities will include developing student evaluation measures and providing blackboards, classroom furniture, and materials kits (containing, e.g., pencils, maps, chalk, graph paper).