Characteristics of High Standard School Education in the community
Well-structured organizational arrangement
Well-built buildings that are a conducive environment for learning
Availability of high-quality learning and teaching materials
Properly trained teachers
Detailed teaching framework
Well-crafted plan of action and the involvement of all stakeholders —teachers, school administration boards, government, parents, community, and students.
Accessibility of high standard school system to all children inclusive of children from the low-income family.
Continuous research and improvement of the school system and effective monitoring of the school system to maintain and improve the standard of education.
Competing with other world-class high effective school institutions.
Well-structured funding arrangement from the collective pool of stakeholders.
Let us now elaborate a little on each of these ideas:
Well-structured organizational arrangement — All organizational bodies in charge of the coordination of institutions of learning need to be highly organized and efficiently-structured so as to produce a highly effective education system. All education bodies which includes: administrative bodies, ministries of education, education research boards, federal, state, local government, etc., need to work in maximum efficiency among themselves. Their goal is to create the environment that high standard school education system is fostered through high professionalism of effective managing practices.
High standard school education can only be carried out in a well built and conducive environment. The environment where schools are built literally support or discourage effective learning outcome. School buildings impact positively or negatively on the students and the school members. Research confirms that students do well in an environment that is conducive, where they feel save and interconnected. The school buildings, its teaching and learning features, table arrangement, lightening system, teaching pattern and methods, and inter-working of teachers-students relationship do greatly determine if students learn well or not.
Quality learning and teaching materials are the essential tools that affect both high standard learning and high standard teaching. Students with adequate learning materials and are taught with up-to-date teaching materials grasps the knowledge taught. School books, computers, learning and teaching videos, resources for learning and teaching hands-on knowledge like science experiment pieces of equipment, physical fitness and sports materials, libraries and laboratory tools, etc, need to be provided both in high quality and in adequate quantity. Books used in teaching and learning should be high in quality and well written to impact utmost skills on the students.
Well trained teachers are like rigorously trained and well-experienced coaches or mentors who effectively and masterfully polish the skills and talents of sports individuals or artists. The roles of well-trained teachers are even more important for in their hands lies the future generation. Nothing destroys a generation more than ill-trained teachers —poor quality teaching force— in fact . . . bad teachers are dangerous and brain poisoning. Well-organized education system makes certain that all teachers, especially teachers who teach the very young are substantially trained and are in continuous training. All nations with technological advancement are having well-structured teachers training programs that formidably equip teachers to impact maximum knowledge to students.
Well-structured teaching framework is like a detailed blueprint needed to construct an intricate and very delicate structure. For example, the Hadron in CERN is a very complicated and complex machine which is used to break up sub-atomic particles in extremely high speed, almost at the speed of light. Its blueprint must be well structured and crafted to the tiniest detail in order to successfully build it. Same way school curriculums that foster high standard academic system are well structured from preschool level to highly specialized learning courses in the high institutions. Nations who have such detailed and well structured academic framework are basking in the euphoria of high standard school education.
Well-crafted plan of action and the involvement of all stakeholders —teachers, school administration boards, government, parents, community, and students — like the well detailed academic framework, refer to clear-cut-out activities that all stakeholders of school education must follow. What families must do to create an enabling environment that fosters high standard school education; what the governments—federal, state, local government— must do and the level of their involvement so as not to create undue interference; what are the expectations of school institutions; what are expected roles students must take part in to be soundly educated, etc. This plan of action needs to be crafted in details and ensure that it is fully followed by all stakeholders.
Accessibility of high standard school system to members of the community irrespective of their income capacities. Children from the rich and children from low-income families need to have equal opportunities for enriched school education. High standard school education system do not segregate and do not marginalize. So all efforts are put to ensure kids from diversified backgrounds enjoy high standard school system. The outcome of giving students from varied backgrounds equal opportunities of adequate enlightenment are too many to enumerate.
Continuous research and improvement of the school system are very essential in order to constantly maintain a high standard of education level. Constant monitoring of the school system ensures that faults that negatively affect the quality of the school system are detected and rectified early.
High standard school systems are constantly competing with other high performing school education systems from other communities. Such constant lookout for better ideas and method from others help to improve the quality of the education system. For example, schools in Singapore have become leaders in mathematics; they are performing excellently in the world annual mathematics competition.
The running of a high standard school system involves huge financial involvement. However, well-structured funding system is the solution and all stakeholders pool fund together to run a high performing school system. Having a shared pool of fund automatically give everyone the chance of monitoring the utilization of the fund. But when one stakeholder become the sole fundraiser, the fundraiser may become bias and interfere unduly to the proper running of the high performing education system. A case on point is the federal government of Nigeria providing almost all the fund for the running of public schools. Since they are the major fund providers, they also take more than an enormous part in the running of the school system with little or no regard to other stakeholders. Hence the malfunctioning of the system, because there are rooms for selfish interest.
Ideas to think about: do Nigerian schools measure well in these characteristics of high standard education? Comment in the box, criticize my ideas and suggest yours.
Let's support the NGIC to bring on competitive academic institutions that will
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