OSF-PRAGUE

PORYV AND STEP BY STEP

GENERAL EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY – INTRODUCTION

Czech education is teacher-centered, not child-centered, and its methods, based on authority and discipline, date back to the 19th century. While the Czech educational system has achieved impressive results in some subject areas (science and math), it lags behind in developing creative, critical thinking, and in promoting the autonomy and initiative of the pupils --, qualities which are essential to the development of an open society, and which will be increasingly important in the information age. The learning process emphasizes memorization of facts, but students have often no idea how to apply this knowledge.

The school system openly discriminates in its treatment of Roma children, who are overwhelmingly sent to "special schools" for the mentally handicapped on the basis of placement tests. Schools are closed communities, which do not interact with their surroundings. Pre-service and in-service training of teachers still offer relatively few courses in alternative education methodologies, school management, strategic planning, critical thinking and school evaluation.

Czech teachers and school administrators are, however, increasingly eager to change the old order, to get trained in new methods and to try different models in order to overcome this gap. Moreover, the Ministry of Education is showing signs of openness to innovation (accreditation of new methodologies, of experimental schools), is interested in working with NGOs, and has acknowledged the problem of placement tests for "special schools."

OSF-PRAGUE PROGRAMS

Our two largest educational programs, PORYV and Step-by-Step, will become part of an independent NGO this year. In 1999, OSF-Prague will still be their primary source of support. After 1999, OSF-Prague will gradually reduce support for these programs as they implement their strategy for self-sustainability through fees for service and other fund-raising. The first steps towards guaranteeing sustainability of these programs have already been initiated. Full accreditation for both programs has been obtained from the Ministry of Education.

Teacher training institutes (state-funded institutions) and Pedagogical Faculties throughout the Czech Republic are in the process of including Step-by- Step methodology in their curriculum. Students are sent on internships to model kindergartens and basic schools established by the Step-by-Step program. In some schools, parents have begun to contribute to the salaries of Teacher assistants and to purchasing supplies and equipment for the schools. In order for these model basic schools to provide a complete model of 5 basic school classes, we plan to continue to support them for 2 more years (1999 and 2000). However, we would like to gradually reduce this support in both 1999 and 2000 so that the schools and community get used to raising funds for these new classes

PORYV’s goal is to support transformation of Czech schools into open, child-centered institutions. PORYV seeks achieve this fundamental change of the Czech education system by integrating new methods, ideas and skills into pre-service and in-service training of teachers, other educators, and school administrators, and by providing on-going support to them in their reform efforts. In order to reach this goal, PORYV provides: 1) training; 2) a resource center; 3) consultancy services; and 4) and small grants to the teaching profession and the school community.

PORYV offers courses for Teachers, School Directors, parents, teacher's assistants, school administrators, and civil servants in multicultural relations, community education, pedagogical skills, trainer skills, leadership and management skills, evaluation, and other areas. PORYV's Resource Center provides a professional library for teachers, schools, students, policy makers and educational institutions. PORYV also provides small grants for community schools, Teachers Training Centers, and communities, as well as individualized consulting services for schools, teacher training institutes, and local communities of professionals developing educational policy.

PORYV has achieved accreditation of a number of its training programs from the Ministry of Education. Seven of the 30 state Teacher Training Centers (in-service) have already begun offering courses developed by PORYV. We expect that, by the year 2000, the training function of PORYV will be completely taken over by existing Teacher Training Centers, Pre-service Training Institutes at Universities, professional associations offering continuing education (e.g. Association of School Managers), and other University Faculties. At that point, PORYV will concentrate its work on consultancy services and development of new ideas and programs to foster continued innovation.

PORYV cooperates with a wide range of local and international partners, including the Fund for Local Government (Czech organization funded by PHARE and the Ministry for Local Government), Tempus, Leonardo, Ministry of Education, various universities and institutes, school boards, schools, and local governments. PORYV has already started negotiations with other funders (British Know-How Fund, Mott Foundation) and has already begun to raise non-OSF funds for training in the areas of multi-cultural education for civil servants and teachers. Marketing of their services through the Fund for Local Government promises to attract paying clients from local government offices and eventually from local School Boards.

Background to the establishment of PORYV:

The Education Support Project PORYV came into being in 1998 through the collaboration of the educational programmes of the Open Society Fund and the initiatives of communities, the state, and non-profit organisations in the educational field.

The founding and development of our education support project (PORYV) was based upon an analysis of the educational needs in the Czech republic and upon recommendations of OECD experts for Czech Educational Policy (1996 – 1998). According to a report by OECD experts, the following components of educational reform still need attention in the Czech republic:

• Instruments for assessing pupil learning achievement in basic school have not yet been developed.
• The rejection of proposals to create multi-profile schools at the levels of upper basic and lower secondary schools has led to a risk that basic schools will have a "second rate" status and end up preparing children exclusively for technical and vocational schools.
• The Inspectorates still lack monitoring and evaluation know-how. School evaluation is rare. The Inspectorates have no discernible strategy and no systemic approach to the professional training of inspectors. There is no access to the results of existing monitoring and evaluation by Inspectorates.
• Financial resources for the development of in-service training are extremely limited. There is no official strategy or policy addressing the need to link in-service teacher training to school development and strengthened careers.
• There is little interest or understanding of democratic school governance and underdeveloped community-school relationships.
• On the positive side, a National Curriculum Council preparation committee was established in1998. PORYV has been reguraly invited to participate in round tables and discussions regarding the National Curriculum Council

Czech Inspectorate report on Czech schools (1996/7) drew attention to the following problems in Czech education:

• Underdeveloped social communication skills of students and a lack of motivation among students
• Distant relationships between teachers and students
• Lack of independence and independent work by students
• Prevalence of fact-based learning in Czech schools

No other private donors, intergovernmental organizations, or local NGOs have begun to develop systemic programs addressing these problems. There is a little evidence of pro-active approach of the the Czech educational establishment and Czech government to address this issues. OSF Prague has been in a unique position to stimulate the development of new approaches to education, develop pilot in-service and pre-service training programs, and facilitate systemic change in the Czech educational system.

Community education

-national conference on Community education

participants-ministry of education, parlament, senat, local goverments, parent associations representatives, school directors, teachers,

-abstract of Comunity eduation presentation material published in teacher press

-three pilot community schools opened with a support of local government

-daily newspaper Lidove noviny reported about the opening, Czech TV reported from one of the community schools

-four people were trained in community school methodology

-in-service training on community education has been started (50 participants)

-partnership wit facutly of aocial siences has been established for pre-service course development

Multicultural education

-seminar on multicutlural education in Senat was organized

-seminar abstract was published in teacher press

-Summer school of Tolerance was orgaized in co-operation of MOE,OSF and Jewish museum

-seminar on IEP discussion paper was organized and will be continued through the PORYV newsletter

-in-country and international partners were identified

Pedagogical skills

Designed and organized originally as Alternative Educational Models Support Program. Through this program all the alternatives (Waldorf, Jenna, Montessorii, School Alive, Open Education, Dalton, Healthy School) education were supported by OSF trhough:

• training on curricuum development for management teams of alternatives
• pilot schools development support
• training for teachers, directors, students
• translation and/or publishing of related materials
• pre-service course has been developed

Step by Step program is part of this area

 

Strategy and coping with change

-Ontario Institute training modul was translated, adapted

-40 people has been trained as change agents

-program has been replicated regionaly in co-opertion with Teacher training centers (4 regions-school directors, local school offices representatives, teacher training centers represenatives)

-program has been taught at the University Palackeho Olomouc as a part of the management training and teacher preparation

-training materials abstract has been reguraly published in teacher press

Mission:

PORYV allows individuals, organisations and civic communities to develop their lives by shared learning and work. PORYV supports the sustainable development of education which promotes the development of active, critically thinking, open, responsible, innovative citizens who are able effectively participate in democracy.

PORYV coordinates and integrates all of OSF-Prague’s national and network educational programs.

• To improve the quality of education for all
• To strengthen community involvement in education
• To enhance activity and responsibility of educational community for life-long learning

• Multicultural education (multicultural management, planning multicultural curriculum)
• Development of communities and community education (community school development, community based project development, democratic school)
• Pedagogical skills (diverse child centered methodologies – Jenna, Waldorf, Dalton, Montessori, Open education, School Alive, Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking (RWCT), teacher for 21 century)
• Strategy and coping with change
• Trainer skills
• Leadership and management skills (strategic planning, goal management, project management, fundraising, public relations, management techniques, delegation, time management, team building, conflict resolution)
• Personal development (creativity improvement, facilitation skills, project-fundraising, presentation techniques, stress management, non/verbal communication, successful personal and professional communication)
• Evaluation (project evaluation, school self-evaluation)
• Use of computer and Internet
• International co-operation

• Training programs and courses
• Consultation
• Study materials, resource center
• Direct technical and practical support

PORYV Institutional Development

1. 1997-1998 Create certificate courses by PORYV acredited by MOE
2. 1998-2000 Training implementation, model schools building, train the trainers, agreements with TTC’s,

Universities (pre- and in/service training sustainability of PORYV programs)

3. 2000 Extensive training of target groups through state Teacher training centers and Universities

4. 2001 Resource center – consultancy to TTCs, schools, teachers

Expected outcomes 2000

1. The emergence of self-developing model schools throughout the Czech republic leads to increased community awareness and participation in the reform of approaches to community education. We expect to achieve the following measurable outcomes by the year 2000:

• 100 self developing schools pre through higher education (or other institutions) oriented to the community and student needs, understanding reform as an ongoing process will have emerged after participating in PORYV activities
• 30 communities will be implementing community education philosophy as a tool of community development and way of developing lives of disadvantaged after participating in PORYV training
• 4 regions (EU recommended to CR to establish 14 regions) will be approaching the development of education strategy for their regions with the active participation of various sectors and community representatives (school representatives, teachers, parents, local businessmen)

PORYV’s main goal is to institutionalize the process of systematic approach for learning-driven change. (??? I don’t get this – Francoise – do you?) PORYV in sense of the philosophy of an open society is not answer-driven.

• critical thinking
• multi-cultural relations
• community development and community education
• pedagogical skills
• strategy and coping with change
• trainer skills
• leadership and management skills
• evaluation
• use of computer and internet

• These trainers will be independent of PORYV funds, employed by existing institutions or will be professional trainers. They will be obliged to train for PORYV free of charge until the year 2000.
• Agreements will be completed with existing training centers and universities to hire PORYV trainers.
• Training modules in the above areas that PORYV focus on will be completed for pre- and in-service training

Specific outcomes which will be achieved by this team of 300 trainers in the areas which PORYV focuses on are detailed below.

Specific expected outcomes for Each Area PORYV concentrates on

3. A functioning information, consulting and evaluation national resource center (PORYV) will be increasingly independent of OSF support by the year 2001.

This outcome is meant to ensure sustainability and support to established learning communities, implement projects and trainings, and expand into new regions of the country on the basis of outcomes 1 and 2 above.

• materials, database, computer and Internet access, conference room will be made available
• facilitation and networking in field of education
• consulting and evaluation services provided by team of experts
• useful information and interactions which inform desision making policers during the critical issues and issues of the day

Evaluation

Approach

The new evaluation of OSF’s education initiative for pre-primary, primary, and secondary education builds from and extends previous evaluation activities. The new evaluation focuses on the initiative’s two programs – PORYV and Step by step – and on the initiative’s organizational development. It consists of five, connected activities:

1. Benchmarking – establishment of criteria for success for the initiative’s programs and organizational development in relation to the initiative’s short and long term goals.
2. Data collection – collection of descriptive and explanatory data about the initiative’s programs and organizational development relative to the benchmarks.
3. Assessment – analysis of descriptive data to determine whether benchmarks were not met, met, or exceeded.
4. Explanation – analysis of explanatory data to understand why benchmarks were not met, met, or exceeded.
5. Exploration – analysis of descriptive and explanatory data to identify unanticipated positive and negative aspects of the initiative’s programs and organizational development.

The evaluation will be primarily formative in purpose. Its primary goal is to help the initiative improve its programs and itself. The evaluation has been designed to provide two occasions yearly – in December and June –

for consideration and use of its findings for program and organizational improvement.

Much of the evaluation will be self-evaluation conducted by initiative staff. The staff will be supported in their work by ## independent evaluators:

Lawrence B. Friedman, Ph.D. Senior Research Associate, Evaluation and Policy Information Center, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, USA

Ondrej Svaton, independent evaluator, Sofres Factum agency

…………………, Institute of Research and Education Development, Charles University

The independent evaluators also will participate in several of the studies. Additional independent evaluators will conduct the impact studies described below.

Program evaluation

PORYV and Step by Step are programs that provide services and resources supporting the education reform efforts of Czech educators and other education stakeholders. Thus, benchmarks about services and resources can be established in the same general categories for both programs:

1. Development – e.g., benchmarks specifying the services and resources to be developed; the individuals to development them; the resources required for their development; and the development processes and timelines.
2. Offerings – e.g., benchmarks specifying what will be offered; when it will be offered; to whom it will be offered; who offers it; and how it is offered.
3. Use – e.g., benchmarks specifying who will use the services and resources; when and where they will be used; how they will be used; and how satisfied users will be with them.
4. Outcomes – e.g., benchmarks specifying the results of using services and resources for the users and for others, and users’ and others’ satisfaction with the results.

There also are several important differences between PORYV and Step by Step. PORYV is a general program developed by OSF that provides services and resources focused on a range of strategies targeting specifically Czech reform priorities. Step by Step is a specific program developed by the Open Society Network and conducted by OSF and a number of other national Soros Foundations that provides services and resources focused on pre-primary and primary education reform priorities shared across Central and Eastern European countries. Further, PORYV is a relatively young program still under development and Step by Step is an older, more mature program. Thus, there also must be benchmarks specific to each program and its services and resources.

The evaluations of both programs will use the same array of evaluation activities and strategies with the differences between the two programs reflected in the specifics of the strategies. For instance, while both evaluations will collect data through a service user survey, some of the items will be project-specific. Also, while both evaluations conduct impact studies, a greater proportion of evaluation resources will be devoted to them in the Step by Step evaluation than in the PORYV evaluation, reflecting the greater maturity of the former program.

PORYV evaluation

The PORYV program provides services and resources of two kinds:

• Knowledge building – professional development modules for educators services (pre-service and in-service); colloquia for policymakers: workshops for other education stakeholders (particularly parents and community members); and resources in print and other media for educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders.

• Knowledge application – consulting for educators, policymakers, schools, and communities; small grants for education reform and innovation; and resources in print and other media for educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders.

The evaluation of PORYV will collect data through the following strategies:

1. Auditing – An audit protocol will be completed for each service and resource, the grant program, and the Resource Center. The audits will be based on development, offering, and use benchmarks concerning expenses, staff time, timeline, process, and users. Progress toward benchmarks will be monitored on an ongoing basis. Data also will be aggregated for review and planning purposes in December and in June.

2. Focus groups – A series of four, staff member focus groups on the development of services, resources, the grant program, and the Resource Center will be conducted in December and June. Staff members who have worked in an area will participate in the focus group for the area. The focus groups will address questions concerning the strengths and areas for improvement in the development process.

3. Surveys – Three surveys will be conducted.

A. Resource users survey – Each person (either on his/her own or as a representative of a group, organization, or institution) who uses a resource or the Resource Center will be asked to complete a brief survey immediately after using it. The survey, in addition to requesting basic "demographic" information, will focus on basic questions in the offering and use categories – how the user learned of it, why s/he decided to use it, and satisfaction with it. Staff of the Resource center will ask visitors to complete the survey as they are leaving. The survey, as a stamped postcard will accompany each resource distributed via the mail. Data will be aggregated for review and planning in December and February.

B. Service users survey – Each person (either on his/her own or as a representative of a group, organization, or institution) who uses a service will be asked to complete a survey immediately after using it. The survey incorporates the resource users survey modified to apply to services and extends it, including questions about the service and its quality. ( training, consulting evaluation sheet)

C. High frequency service users survey – Audit data will enable us to identify individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions who have made frequent use of services. In May, a survey will be conducted of individuals who were or represent groups, organizations, or institutions who were frequent users. Decisions about how many people to survey and whether all or a sample of high frequency users should be surveyed will be made in light of the analysis of the audit data and resources available. The survey will go into more depth than the service users survey about the services used and their quality, as well as asking about the outcomes of using the services and suggestions for improving the array of services offered. The survey will be distributed with a postage-paid return envelope via the mail.

4. Impact studies – Several studies of service outcomes will be conducted as appropriate. A number of educators and schools have been using PORYV services for several years. In several instances, we have evidence suggesting that the work has and is having a positive influence. To the extent that resources permit, studies will be conducted of and across these educators and schools. The goal of these studies is to identify, describe, and explain the outcomes of their use of PORYV services and the relations between the services and the outcomes. Possible studies will be identified by staff in consultation with an independent evaluator or evaluation team. PORYV staff will then discuss the possibilities with the educators and schools involved. If those involved agree, the evaluator or team will design and conduct an impact study. The study questions and methodologies will depend on the outcomes and services to be investigated.

The following matrix shows the strategies to be used to collect data on the various categories of PORYV services and resources.

Budget proposal 1999

Budget is based on the evaluation outcomes untill August 1998. There might be some changes in budgeting according to project evaluation outcomes in december 1998 and needs analysis december 1998-January 1999.

Governance

PORYV-Education Support Project including RWCT, Step by Step program and Internet center will become an independent NGO in October 1998. ABoard of Directors will be appointed at that time, whose members will be:.

Board members (period of transformation October-December 1998):

Miroslav Pospisil, PhD, director of Jan Hus Foundation (foundation focus on higher education)

Jana Pekarkova, PhD, Vice Mayor Prague 12

Marie Kopecka, Executive director OSF Prague

Expert commitee PORYV + Step by Step:

Eva Valentova, board of directors OSF Prague

Miroslav Pospisil, NGO board

Addtitional will be appointed

Expert commitee Internet center:

Will be appointed

NGO board responsibilities:

strategy approval including budget

evaluation review

Expert commitee:

Advisory, consultancy regerding the startegy content

Program director:

Dana Hradcova, MEd

responsibilities:

strategy development and implementation

evaluation design and implementation

program management