Janet Sarker is a 2013 Commonwealth Professional Fellow, hosted by Anglican Alliance. She is the Education Coordinator for the Church of Bangladesh, and spent seven weeks in the UK on her Fellowship with education experts and schools across the country.
The knowledge and skills that I gained through my Commonwealth Professional Fellowship 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
- 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
- Introducing the ‘Five C’ leadership model for improved leadership.
A session for school head teachers on the ‘Five C’ leadership model in Jobarpar, Barisal, Bangladesh
The activity plan has been shared with all of our schools, and a few of them have been brought in to the training programme. The whole process of upgrading the school management has been taken up very enthusiastically by the teachers . They said the plan was ‘the need of the time’.
The Church of Bangladesh has 57 schools of different levels, from multilingual 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 where public schools facilities are rarely available.
Sharing plans to improve school management with school teachers in Panihata village, Sherpur, Bangladesh
Improvement in school management is now a prime concern in the process of making the institutions effective and sustainable. The Church of Bangladesh believes that the skills that I have gathered through the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship will enormously benefit the school management to become more effective and efficient in delivering quality education and achieving institutional sustainability.
