Name: Zabihullah Zabih Course: Theories of Change and Action Science for Innovation and Improvement Project: Second What Should the Ministry of Education do to make community-based schools sustainable in Afghanistan? Millions of dollars have been spent by national and international organizations on communitybased education since 2006 in Afghanistan. The main objective of this project has been to provide primary education in remote areas where children have no access to public schools due to the long distances between the villages and public schools. So, several partners of the Ministry of Education of Afghanistan, domestic and foreign humanitarian organizations, have established numerous community-based schools in villages to educate thousands of children. As I have also worked with the New York University’s research project on the impact of community-based schools on children for almost five years in Afghanistan, I noticed one issue with the community-based education project in general. This issue is that the community-based schools are funded temporarily, and they are all providing education for three to four years only. As soon as the fund for the community-based education project is over, the organization shut down the community schools, and the children are left without any education once again. It doesn’t matter whether it is a national organization or an international one, they stop supporting the community-based schools when they receive no funds from international donors. They leave the students behind with an unknown future. Since the international community will not able to fund the community-based education project permanently in Afghanistan and the community schools won’t survive without their support either, the ministry of education should make a strategy to make the community-based schools sustainable and keep providing education for the rural children when and if the national and international organization are no longer able to support them. As a consultant who is hired to help the Ministry of Education of Afghanistan for creating and applying their strategy for making the community school sustainable, I want to apply action science in order to help them implement their strategy effectively. The Ministry of Education of Afghanistan has already been trying to keep the community schools active in areas where the international organizations have stopped their activities and no longer provide any support for their community school. The approach the Ministry of Education has taken is to change the current community school into outreaches of closest public schools and give their responsibilities to the District Education Centers. As Dr. Lawson has explained the single-loop learning in his lecture, single-loop learning happens when the organization decision-makers or actors try to correct the mismatch between the actions and intended outcomes just by changing their action. No governing values and assumptions are changed. So, to apply it in community school sustainability, the current actions and strategies of the Ministry of Education which is to keep the current community schools as the outreach of public schools don’t work because the community schools need teachers, educational materials, and salary for their teachers. The District Education Centers don’t have the capacity to provide all these necessities to the community school without receiving a budget from the Ministry of Education. The strategies and actions should be changed in order to obtain the intended outcome which is to make the community schools sustainable without receiving any funds and support from international organizations. The actions that need to be taken by the ministry of education are to allocate budgets for community schools, create a team that should be responsible to monitor the community school activities and outcomes, and to mobilize villagers in order to make the community school sustainable. Actions - Outcomes Allocate Budget Create a Sperate Team Mobilize Villagers - Community Schools will be sustainable Single-Loop Learning To make the Ministry of Education works effectively for the sustainability of community schools, applying double-loop learning would be much helpful. As Dr. Lawson has described, double-loop learning refers to changes in the values, assumptions, or underlying causes an organization has behind the problematic actions. The assumptions and underlying cause could be many or anything, such as organizational policies, norms, staffs’ motives, and any practices that prevent the ministry of education from making the community schools sustainable in rural areas of Afghanistan. By applying double-loop learning, I will have the ministry of education staff think about their action and how their assumptions have shaped their actions. They need to find out what is going on inside the Ministry of Education and how they will work on the sustainability of community schools. They need to look for barriers to find out that prevent them from working on the sustainability of community schools. Is it the authorities, system issues, a team, district education centers, or it is the local people? Once the issues, barriers, assumptions are found, and errors are detected, they will be able to change their behavior, change their policy, take responsibility, and easily achieve their objective which is to have sustainable community schools in rural areas in the future. Assumptions - Found the barriers Solved the policy issues Receive villagers’ support for community schools Actions - Outcomes Allocate Budget Create a Sperate Team Mobilize Villagers - Single-Loop Learning Double-Loop Learning Community Schools will be sustainable Error Detection, Correction and Prevention Errors usually happen in the two levels at the Ministry of Education, especially in its community-based education division. The first error happens at the individual level when the head of the community-based education division and head of the District Educational Center is changed and replaced by someone else who has no or very limited knowledge and training developing and managing community-schools in rural areas. Their lack of knowledge leads both of them to mismanage and make bad decisions about the community-school project. The second error happens at the public policy level where the policymakers design the policy based on the limited available information about community-based education’s criteria, requirements, and challenges. They have understood that the Ministry of Education needs to conduct rigorous researches on how to make the community-based schools sustainable in rural areas, and if not possible, it needs to create an affiliation with international research organization in this field to fill this gap. So, the Espoused Theory of policymakers is to design community-based education policies based on the findings of researches. However, their Theory of Use has a contradiction with their Espoused Theory because the Ministry of Education policymakers have rarely initiated to design a research project to solve this issue. Neither they have made any partnership with any other international research organization to conduct research on their behalf to help them. To solve this issue, Reflective and Reflexive practice can help us to detect, correct, and prevent errors in the future. As a consultant, I will develop a mechanism to enable the team and the division that works on the community-based education project to detect, prevent, and learn from errors. Through Reflective and Reflexive practice, the supervisor will have regular monitoring of activities, progress, and application of plan as decided and team members will be encouraged to come forward and report any error they detect. Improvement Need: Allocating Budget, Communicating Effectively Among the Staff, and Receiving Villagers’ Support Current Practice: Actions Budget Issues: o No budget available Communication Issues: o Lack of communication among staff o Decision are made by head of the department o District Centers’ staff are not invited for consultation Villagers Support: o Head of villages are not informed regarding the community school future o No collaboration between the villagers and the Ministry of Education Policy Issues: o No Policy for Community Schools Improvement Practice: Actions Budget Issues: o Allocating budget to provide teachers’ salary and instruction materials for students Communication Issues: o Encouraging positive and effective communication among the staff o Team working o The head of department should consult with the relevant staff before he makes any decision o District Education Center’s staff should be involved in decision making because they know the field much better than others. Villagers Support: o Start collaborating with the villagers and their teachers o Consult with them about their schools o Train villagers how to manage, monitor, and solve their daily issues if they face any. Policy Issues: o Make policy for community schools Ministry of Education Officials’ Beliefs, Perception, and Role Preferences: Beneath the Iceberg Current Practice: Improvement Practice: Beliefs The current budget does not allow us to allocate a budget for community schools Head of Department is the only person who make the right decision regarding the sustainability of community schools Staffs are not fully informed about current the situation and budget shortage Staffs are not able to make effective decision The District Education Centers have no capacity to take the responsibilities of community schools Parents are not interested in sending their children to community schools Villagers won’t take any responsibility of community schools No one will work as a teacher in remote areas Actions Beliefs Managing the current budget effectively will allow to allocate part of it for community schools. Head of department will only finalize the decision regarding the community school’s sustainability Field staff, managing staff, and staff of District Education Centers are more aware of the situation in the field and they can make more effective decision for how to make the community schools sustainable Parents have already allowed their children to attend community school when they were supported other organizations Villagers have also already supported their community schools and they will support it again. The current teachers will continue teaching or we will hire someone qualified for teaching from inside or nearby villages Actions Mapping the Needs Current Practice: Beliefs Beliefs Actions Actions Intended and Unintended Consequences Improvement Practice: Children will be left with no access to schools in rural areas Children will be left uneducated in these areas The Ministry of Education won’t be able to achieve its goals of providing education to all children in Afghanistan in future Intended Consequences Children will receive primary education in rural areas It will help the Ministry of Education to achieve its goals of providing to all children in Afghanistan To conclude, the improvements I have recommended will solve two key issues. First, the Ministry of Education and the team that works on the community-based schools will improve their communication among themselves. The decision will be made after consulting with everyone in the team, including the field staff, and the district education centers who are dealing with community schools and their issues most of the times. Second, the villagers will be mobilized and will be used to manage and monitor the activities of their schools inside the villages.
