Project Examples

The Role and Status of Refugee Teachers

In refugee contexts, teachers are often significantly under-represented in refugee populations. Often, education providers recruit unqualified staff from the population to bridge the gap in the teaching workforce, giving brief training to new recruits. This can have an effect on education quality, access and inclusion.

The Commonwealth Secretariat undertook research to find out the issues faced by teachers who are forced to migrate. The study seeks to understand why teachers stay in or leave the teaching profession. It looks at the institutional environment affecting these decisions, and recommends what role policy can play in encouraging teachers to stay. It draws on a review of literature and on interviews and questionnaires undertaken with key stakeholders, including teachers, government officials and civil society actors, during field research in Kenya, South Africa, South Sudan and Uganda. The full report is available here.

An Information Brief is available that outlines the key findings of the study and presents recommendations for policy and practice for those working in contexts featuring refuge teachers, especially in developing countries.

Download:

• Educators In Exile Information Brief 

Education for Sustainable Development in Small Island Developing States

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a key approach to bringing about the behaviour change necessary to tackle the consumption patterns resulting in climate change. It also has an important role to play in building the capacity of stakeholders to mitigate or adapt to environmental change, and in promoting responsible sourcing and disposal of resources. However, efforts to implement ESD have had mixed results.

To address this, the Commonwealth Secretariat undertook a research study focusing on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in a number of small island states vulnerable to climate change. The study identifies good practices, analysing why they are successful and how they might be adapted to other contexts. The study focuses particularly but not exclusively on climate change education, and uses the findings to produce practical and realistic recommendations on how ESD may be better integrated in education policy and strategy and delivered more comprehensively. The publication is available here.

An Information Brief is available which sets out the key issues in the study together with a summary of its suggestions for removing barriers to effective ESD implementation.

Download:

• ESD/SIDS Information Brief

Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol

At the request of Education Ministers, to balance the rights of teachers to migrate against the need to protect the integrity of national education systems, we have developed the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol. This instrument on ethical recruitment and migration has been recognised by UNESCO, the ILO, the Organization of American States, the African Union and our own Commonwealth Heads of Government.

The Protocol has been identified as an international good practice in migration and development. Advancing implementation, advocacy and dissemination of Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol through regional meetings of ministries of education, teaching service commissions and teachers’ organizations to ensure that some countries are not depleted of their trained teachers through controlled migration is an important thrust in the work of the Education Section.

The Secretariat also organised a workshop on exchange of good practice on teacher retention among Commonwealth countries in the Africa region.

Download:

• Teacher Recruitment Protocol

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Multi-grade teacher training Module

We have developed a comprehensive package to facilitate improved teaching–learning processes in multi-class/grade teaching situations within and beyond Africa to address education delivery in difficult and remote circumstances.

In collaboration with ADEA, we have organised or supported a number of national and regional workshops to facilitate the adoption of the package. Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Samoa have successfully adopted and incorporated multi-grade approaches in teacher training programmes.

Training workshops have been organised in the Caribbean and Pacific region attended by a good number of countries in the respective regions to introduce the multi-grade teaching module.

The Ministry of Education of Samoa developed a case study on multi-grade teaching, which is intended to be disseminated across Commonwealth countries as an example of good practice on the implementation of multi-grade teaching.

Countries that have attended Secretariat inception workshops are progressively incorporating multi-grade teaching into regular initial and pre-service training programms, and its importance is being widely acknowledged in both, mono-grade and multi-grade educational contexts.

Developing models of gender responsive schools though pilot action projects

A study on ‘Gender Analysis of Classroom and Schooling Processes in Secondary Schooling’ was conducted in; India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Samoa, Seychelles, and Trinidad and Tobago. Pilot Action projects have been initiated in four out of seven study countries. These are; India, Malaysia, Seychelles, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The countries include those where boys’ underachievement is an issue and those where girls’ under attainment still remains a problem. The experiences of the action projects are being documented in the form of an Action Guide on making schools more gender responsive. The Action Guide will be finalized after organising regional trial workshops in sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific. We have earlier organized regional workshops in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to promote sharing of good practices in Girls’ Education.