Strenghtening Basic Education Program
Supporting education means supporting El Salvador’s future. An improved educational system contributes to reducing the gap between the rich and the poor and creating more opportunities for El Salvador’s youth. Photo by FEPADE |
Providing future generations with quality, adequate education is an important challenge in any society. Thanks to progress made since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992, universal access to primary education is almost a reality in El Salvador and priority has been placed on education as a means to overcome poverty and accelerate development. However, three main challenges remain: educational quality, equality in access to education, and adequate funding for educational programs. USAID’s Strengthening Basic Education Program is an integrated group of activities that aims to assist the Ministry of Education (MINED) in addressing these issues.
The Strengthening Basic Education Program supports the development of educational policies that increase and improve social investment, transparency, and equity in the education sector. Additionally, the program seeks to improve the quality of education by enhancing language and literacy teaching and learning at the primary school level, as well as increasing the resources devoted to education.
Current Activities
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Training Teachers and Ministry Staff – USAID is implementing a teacher training program focused on increased teacher competency and effectiveness in language and literacy education. Additionally, Ministry of Education technical staff and teacher coaches are participating in a training program that focuses on teacher training, coaching, and mentoring.
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Training Teachers and Ministry Staff (cont) - Participants in the teacher trainings are provided with on-going, in-classroom coaching, modeling, mentoring and technical assistance; they also participate in innovation learning circles for discussion and information exchange on teaching practices, challenges, lessons learned, and best practices.
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Improving Research and Evaluations – Informed policy decisions can only be made if effective research has been carried out. USAID is strengthening the MINED’s capacity to assess the impact of its programs and strategies by carrying out evaluations and research. Current research includes: (a) a strategic review of EDUCO, the program through which most rural area schools are operated; (b) a baseline study of the technical assistance that MINED has provided schools in order to improve quality; and (c) reorganization of school clusters to implement the whole school approach (“Escuela de Tiempo Pleno”).
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Making Use of Technology - USAID is helping develop an information system for MINED that will facilitate decision making and transparency. The system allows for the compilation of information from different sources to provide statistics and educational indicators which are accessible through the MINED website. This information system also contains a geo-referential component to locate all schools nationwide; the school profile with indicators, relevant information, and photos is available for each school.
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Tracking Investment in Education – The National Educational Accounts system was created in 2007 to track educational expenditures as well as government and private sector investments and donations towards educational programs. USAID is currently supporting the institutionalization of this system by providing MINED with technical assistance to continue tracking the investments that various sectors are making in education. This information is used by decision makers and allows the MINED to report on education indicators.
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Facilitating Innovative Alliances – USAID promotes public-private alliances as a way to increase the resources available in El Salvador’s schools. Currently the program is working in partnership with the International Book Bank, which has made book donations over the past four years. The program is also working to help students make better use of after-school free-time and holiday vacations; with the support of the Confia and Ingenio el Angel companies, principals, teachers, and parents are able to coordinate healthy and productive free-time activities for Salvadoran schoolchildren.
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Strengthening School Management – In order to improve learning and equity, the program provides technical assistance and training on management, finance, and decision making to school principals, management advisors, departmental directors and MINED teams. These activities are implemented within the framework of a decentralization strategy which assists the departments in strengthening their own organization and effectiveness.
Accomplishments
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Due to USAID teacher-training –a 291 hour course aimed at 2,500 Salvadoran teachers–, a significant increase has been seen in teacher competency in the areas of reading comprehension and writing. At the beginning of the program 88%, of teachers lacked basic competencies in these two areas. However, by the end of the program, 46% of teachers demonstrated acceptable levels of competency in these areas, and, of these teachers 8% were qualified as highly competent.
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The number of students whose reading comprehension skills are at "optimal" level has increased from 11% to 31%. The number of students whose writing skills are at "optimal" level has increased from 9% to 26%, thanks to improved teacher proficiency.
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Approximately 400 MINED technical/field staff received training in mentoring, coaching, and teacher training skills through a four-module, 150 hour training program.
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The final National Education Accounts report was published, a reflection the progress made to track education expenditures nationwide.
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The MINED information system is available on the MINED website, supported by several databases. The system includes a planning tool for decision makers known as the “situational room,” which presents updated information based on a list of selected education indicators.
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Approximately 4,565 principals and 412 advisors from the MINED field teams have received training on school management planning tools, known as Education Project (PEI) and Annual Education Plan (PEA). This training will support the national expansion of PEI and PEA in close to 6,000 schools. Students of schools who fully participated and developed their PEI and PEA strategies achieved significant improvements in math when their scores on the national achievement tests were compared to the scores of other schools.
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