The knowledge and skills that I gained through the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship Scheme have since been used to introduce the upgrading of school management for the Church of Bangladesh. This has taken place through sharing our strategic planning and vision for the future.
Our plans included:
- Visiting the schools and sharing the activity plan to upgrade the management of the school;
- Arranging training for teachers and the head teachers for better schooling and effective administration; and
- Planning a follow-up to evaluate the results achieved and initiate further need-based training.
A training plan has been designed to achieve the above. This includes:
- Skills development to conduct effective meetings and seminars;
- Familiarisation with the student-centred learning process;
- Understanding long-term student progress data management;
- Ensuring an increase in the student’s role in school leadership;
- Introducing improved classroom management ; and
- Introducing the ‘Five C’ leadership model for improved leadership.[1]
At this time all of our schools have learnt about the activity plan and a few have been brought in to the training programme. The whole process of upgrading the school management has been taken up by the teachers very enthusiastically. They said the plan was “the need of the time”.
The Church of Bangladesh has 57 schools of different levels, from multi-lingual pre-primary to high schools, with 11,175 students and 265 teachers. Most of our schools are located in the remote areas of the country, which are inhabited by poor people and public schools facilities are rarely available.
Improvement in the school management is now a prime concern in the process of making the institutions effective and sustainable. The Church of Bangladesh believes the skills that I have gathered through the Commonwealth Scheme will enormously benefit the school management to become more effective and efficient in delivering quality education and achieving institutional sustainability.
The picture shows the activities that have been undertaken after returning from taking part in the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship programme, UK in 2013 during 15 February to 4 April 2014 that was arranged by Anglican Alliance.
[1] The Five C model of leadership is based on the five core principles of clarification, consultation, coaching, confronting and congratulating.
