| Hakim Hayat |
THE proposed two-and-a-half year long literacy and numeracy coaching project, developed jointly by Education Development Trust (EDT), or Centre for British Teachers (CfBT) and the Ministry of Education (MoE), will take off in January 2017.
The programme, which is crafted for teachers in schools across the country, is hoped to deliver systematic improvement in the quality of literacy and numeracy teaching in schools using coaches as the key change agents to improve teaching practice.
The project is designed to drastically improve students’ standard and performance in English and Mathematics subjects with the help of international coaches working along-side local teachers.
The innovative project also aims to support the implementation of the SPN21, or National Education System for the 21st Century initiative, ensuring high literacy and numeracy standards.
Over the span of the project, 60 international coaches will work directly with teachers who have been identified during an inception phase in one-to-one coaching sessions. These coaches have come from high performing education systems across the world as well as CfBT.
During an official launching ceremony held at the MoE building, Old Airport Road yesterday, Pehin Orang Kaya Indera Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Suyoi bin Haji Osman, the Minister of Education, remarked the urgency to produce highly skilled English and Mathematics teachers.
“We want our students in lower primary to develop a strong foundation in English and Mathematics while students in upper primary consolidate their learning in English and Mathematics and apply this both in school and beyond,” the minister hoped, adding that consequently, secondary level students can extend their learning in the subjects and apply them with self-independence.
He shared that during the first year of its implementation, a total of 596 learning partners from the entire 149 primary and secondary schools will be coached and at a later stage, the programme will allow local teachers to be trained as coaches to continue to work to ensure sustainability.
Pehin Orang Kaya Indera Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Suyoi bin Haji Osman, the Minister of Education, delivering his speech at the launching ceremony of the Literacy and Numeracy Coaching Programme.
The minister said the project aims to have 80 highly qualified and accredited local coaches by 2019. The longer-term goal is to have two local coaches for numeracy and literacy in every school by 2020 in the country to help every child achieve their potential.
“It is crucial that at the end of this project we increase human and organisational capacity development at all levels of the system as well as create a strong culture and support structure to enable high student performance,” added the minister.
He went on to highlight the crucial need to have strong literacy and numeracy skills which he said will lay the foundation for all students to succeed at school, and later at work and in their daily lives.
He also urged stronger collaboration among different departments in the MoE to ensure the success and effective implementation of the programme, while noting several challenges such as the lack of available data faced by the project team during the inception phase.
“We don’t have a centralised data management system. I hope that the relevant departments that are in charge of these data will work together to find a solution to overcome this problem because we will be relying heavily on the data to see the progress for us to be able to give appropriate and effective support to our teachers and students,” the minister stressed.
The overall project goals were developed by combining the relevant objectives of the Brunei Vision 2035 to create educated, highly skilled and accomplished people with the MoE’s Seven Grand Initiatives which include ensuring highly qualified English and Mathematics teaching and all students are highly numerate and literate in English as well as creating a system empowered to deliver sustained improvements in literacy and numeracy.
During the first year, coaches will work in primary schools with teachers of Years 1, 2, 5 and 6 to support the programme’s implementation and preparations for the Primary School Assessment (PSR).
MoE is also preparing secondary schools to take the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) tests in 2018. PISA is an international survey that evaluates education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science.
The PISA tests take place every three years and Brunei students will be taking the Reading and Mathematics test in 2018 to allow the country to evaluate itself in comparison with international standards and achieve its 2035 aspirations. The coaches will also be on hand to support Brunei’s PISA readiness.
MoE said two types of schools will receive support in the programme. They are ‘Grow’ schools that can develop quickly to share good practices with other schools and ‘Accelerated Grow’ schools whose results are currently below expectations.
All schools receive one day of support a week while some will receive more, depending on need. Coaches will teach together with class teachers and share best practices and will also support school principals to create a close working relation between the programme, school leaders and heads of cluster.
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