Widely accepted dimensions of quality education

Widely accepted dimensions of quality education

Considerable consensus exists around the basic dimensions of quality education today, however. Quality education includes:

l  Learners who are healthy, well-nourished and ready to participate and learn, and supported in learning by their families and communities;

l  Environments that are healthy, safe, protective and gender-sensitive, and provide adequate resources and facilities;

l  Content that is reflected in relevant curricula and materials for the acquisition of basic skills, especially in the areas of literacy, numeracy and skills for life, and knowledge in such areas as gender, health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS prevention and peace;

l  Processes through which trained teachers use child-centred teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms an schools and skilful assessment to facilitate learning and reduce disparities;

l  Outcomes that encompass knowledge, skills and attitudes, and are linked to national goals for education and positive participation in society.

Components of quality assurance

For quality learners:

l  Good health and nutrition;

l  Early childhood psychosocial development experiences;

l  Regular attendance for learning;

l  Family support for learning;

Quality Learning Environments(Physical components):

l  Quality of school facilities;

l  Interaction between school infrastructure and other quality dimensions;

l  Class size – controlling to be a proper size;

l  Peaceful, safe environments;

l  Teachers’ behaviors that affect safety;

l  Effective school discipline policies;

l  Inclusive environments;

l  Non-violence and non-bullies in schools;

Definition of school performance

In educational institutions, success is measured by academic performance, or how well a student meets standards set out by local government and the institution itself. As career competition grows ever more fierce in the working world, the importance of students doing well in school has caught the attention of parents, legislators and government education departments alike.

Although education is not the only road to success in the working world, much effort is made to identify, evaluate, track and encourage the progress of students in schools. Parents care about their child's academic performance because they believe good academic results will provide more career choices and job security. Schools, though invested in fostering good academic habits for the same reason, are also often influenced by concerns about the school's reputation and the possibility of monetary aid from government institutions, which can hinge on the overall academic performance of the school. State and federal departments of education are charged with improving schools, and so devise methods of measuring success in order to create plans for improvement.

In the past, academic performance was often measured more by ear than today. Teachers' observations made up the bulk of the assessment, and today's summation, or numerical, method of determining how well a student is performing is a fairly recent invention. Grading systems came into existence in America in the late Victorian period, and were initially criticized due to high subjectivity. Different teachers valued different aspects of learning more highly than others, and although some standardization was attempted in order to make the system more fair, the problem continued. Today, changes have been made to incorporate differentiation for individual students' abilities, and exploration of alternate methods of measuring performance is ongoing. The tracking of academic performance fulfills a number of purposes. Areas of achievement and failure in a student's academic career need to be evaluated in order to foster improvement and make full use of the learning process. Results provide a framework for talking about how students fare in school, and a constant standard to which all students are held. Performance results also allow students to be ranked and sorted on a scale that is numerically obvious, minimizing complaints by holding teachers and schools accountable for the components of each and every grade

In all aspects of the school and its surrounding education community, the rights of the whole child, and all children, to survival, protection, development and participation are at the centre. This means that the focus is on learning which strengthens the capacities of children to act progressively on their own behalf through the acquisition of relevant knowledge, useful skills and appropriate attitudes; and which creates for children, and helps them create for themselves and others, places of safety, security and healthy interaction. (Bernard, 1999).

School improvement can be an overall approach or the result of a specific application of an innovation. It is aimed at changing in order to achieve educational goals more effectively. Hopkins,Ainscoward west(1994) discuss two meanings or senses of school improvement. The first is “common sense which related to general efforts to make school better places. The second is ‘a more technical specific phase…School improvement as a distinct approach to educational change that enhances student outcomes as well as strengthening the school capacity for managing change.

School improvement is a carefully planned and managed process  that take place over a period of  several years.

A  key focus for change are the ‘internal conditions’-these include not only the teaching –learning activities in the school, but also the school’s procedures, role allocations and resource uses that support the teaching and learning process.

2.      Features of school performance

Performance in school is evaluated in a number of ways. For regular grading, students demonstrate their knowledge by taking written and oral tests, performing presentations, turning in homework and participating in class activities and discussions. Teachers evaluate in the form of letter or number grades and side notes, to describe how well a student has done. At the state level, students are evaluated by their performance on standardized tests geared toward specific ages and based on a set of achievements students in each age group are expected to meet.

3.      Considerations

The subjectivity of academic performance evaluation has lessened in recent years, but it has not been totally eliminated. It may not be possible to fully remove subjectivity from the current evaluation methods, since most are biased toward students that respond best to traditional teaching methods. Standardized testing is best responded to by students that excel in reading, mathematics and test-taking, a skill that is not in itself indicative of academic worth. The tests reward visual learners, and give no chance for kinesthetic or auditory learners to show their abilities. The standardized test fails to recognize students with learning and physical disabilities that do not allow them to complete the test in the same manner or amount of time as other students. Evaluations from classroom teachers, though they give the most detailed information, may still retain bias if individual differentiation and learning styles have not been taken into account.

4.      Six factors that influence academic performance

Many factors have been identified to influence academic performance whether positively or negatively. But for the purpose of this article, only Six of these factors will be considered, they include: Socio-demographic characteristics, 2)Socio-economic status, 3) Past academic performance, 4)Environment, 5)Psychological factors and 6)Study skills. The variables under these factors can broadly be grouped into modifiable and non modifiable variables. The non modifiable variables consist mainly of gender, ethnicity and age while majority of the variables like parental education and income, school facilities and characteristics, appropriate role models and orientation, learning approach and time management can all be grouped under modifiable variables. The modifiable variables are those variables which when effectively manipulated can give the expected/desired influence on academic performance.

Socio-demographic characteristics consist of the student's age , gender, marital status and ethnicity. Age plays a significant role on academic performance as younger students tend to perform better than their older counterparts. Females performing better than males in their medical training had been a consistent finding in literature. The effect of ethnic minority status on academic performance may be actually due to the influence of socio-economic status.

Socio-economic status can be defined as " a person's overall social position to which attainment in both social and economic domain contribute but when it is used in studies of school academic achievement, it refers to socio-economic status of parents and family. The social and economic component of socio-economic status may have separate influence on educational outcome. SES entails parent's occupation and income, parents educational attainment/level and family structure/size. Children from low SES families are more likely to have, difficulties with their studies, lower levels of literacy and display negative attitudes to school. In other words, your educational success depends very strongly on the socio-economic status of your parents.

Environment refers to those natural conditions and circumstances affecting a person's life. It can also be seen as the external conditions affecting life. The physical components, that is the school structures (Lecture halls, etc), school types (private, public  and home school ) and the individual's past environment (where he/she was brought up) can also be considered as variables under environmental factor. Some studies found no statistical significant difference between any of the school types (private, public etc), however, school facilities,  school size and characteristics obviously have significant effect on students' and teachers' ability to perform as supported by many studies across the world.

Psychological factors include those variables that affect the state of mind and its process. Motivation (Orientation), sleep and perceived stress are all psychological variables which have effect on academic performance. Parents may have low income and low status occupation for example but nevertheless transmit high education aspirations to their children. Lack of appropriate role model, orientation and aspiration of peer affect individual effort and achievement in school.

Some studies have shown that the only ready prediction of future performance is past performance. Self concept of one's performance in the past (positive rating) are well correlated with better academic achievement. Previous academic performance serves as a good predictor of success especially in the student's first year in college.

Study skills covers both motivation for learning and process by which the students approaches the task of learning.  This involves three learning processes i.e. making links across material, searching for a deeper understanding of the material and looking for general principles. Awareness and practice of learning approaches, attendance to lectures and time management are variables under study skills. Ineffective study habits, common among professional student, is one of the potential causes of inadequate students performance

Definition of school effectiveness

school effectiveness is a Degree to which schools are successful in accomplishing their educational objectives or fulfilling their administrative, instructional, or service function

Researchers perspective about school effectiveness.

Fraser (1994, p. 104) defined effectiveness is a measure of the match between stated goals and their achievement. It is always possible to achieve ‘easy’, low-standard goals. In other words, quality in higher education cannot only be a question of achievements ‘outputs’ but must also involve judgements about the goals (part of ‘inputs’). Erlendsson (2002) defines effectiveness as the extent to which objectives are met (‘doing the right things’).

The UNESCO definition is Effectiveness is an output of specific review/analyses (e.g., the WASC Educational Effectiveness Review or its Reports on Institutional Effectiveness) that measure (the quality of) the achievement of a specific educational goal or the degree to which a higher education institution can be expected to achieve specific requirements. It is different from efficiency, which is measured by the volume of output or input used. As a primary measure of success of a programme or of a higher education institution, clear indicators, meaningful information, and evidence best reflecting institutional effectiveness with respect to student learning and academic achievement have to be gathered through various procedures (inspection, observation, site visits, etc.). Engaging in the measurement of educational effectiveness creates a value-added process through quality assurance and accreditation review and contributes to building, within the institution, a culture of evidence.

There are five-factor theory of effective schools explained how a school can achieve their effectiveness. The factors are :strong leadership；a clear school mission；3. Safe and Orderly Climate；4.Monitoring Student Progress；5. High Expectations