Final report : findings, conclusions, recommendations -- mid-term evaluation of Nicaragua basic education project BASE

Mid-term evaluation covers the period 1994-7/96 and is based on review of 113 documents, discussions with 97 project and non-project personnel, and visits to about 100 classrooms in over 50 schools. The project's initial achievements are impressive, but restricted primarily to just 68 of Nicaragua's 5,000 primary schools. These 68 schools were developed as models and potential training centers for other teachers. Decentralization, which gives real power and funds to the community, has also advanced methodically in an autonomous school program which currently covers fewer than 500 schools. Parallel to that, the Ministry of Education (MED), with project support, is deconcentrating functions from the central office to 19 departmental offices. The project has done well what it has tried to do. In addition to advances in decentralization and deconcentration, innovative solutions are now in place in budgeting, accounting, finance, teacher pay, evaluation, research, and human resource development. These are supported by a sophisticated management information system (MIS) which reaches down to the departmental offices. On the substantive side, 46,000 new child-centered teacher guides and manuals and 426,000 textbooks are in place, and 18,000 teachers (almost 100%) have received some training. However, teachers still do not apply the new curriculum, preferring rote teaching methods, the blackboard, textbook, and copybook. Changing this will be the central challenge of the second phase of the project. The evaluation team recommends that in this second phase the project focus on a single goal: improving the quality of classroom learning. Three mechanisms are proposed: (1) simplified, practical pamphlets which demonstrate to a largely untrained teacher how to plan to use a broad range of good learning materials and to make learning more active, practical, and participatory at the classroom level; (2) a continuous teacher training program which combines visits of mobile teams to classrooms, the establishment of learning centers, distance training techniques, and face-to-face training; and (3) systematic development of community support for schools. The overall strategy is to move from micro to macro, to reach out from the 68 model schools to include all 5,000. (Author abstract, modified)