Community Involvement in Education in Egypt: the Role of School Board of Trustees

1. Community Involvement in Education in Egypt: the Role of School Board of Trustees Dr. Ahmed El-Zeki Mansoura University,Egypt To be presented in the seminar of UCCER ( UNESCO Centre for Comparative Education Research ) University of Nottingham, UK Wednesday , 14th March 2007

2. Where is Egypt? Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

3. Egypt’s Map Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

4. Egypt’s Profile • Location • Land Area • Capital city • Population • Climate • History • Religion • Major Exports Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

5. Egypt…past and present Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

6. Egypt’s Education System Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

7. Egypt’s Education System Egypt has one of the largest education systems in the world, as classified by the World Bank (2002), • with 16 million students (over 90 percent enrolled in public schools), • 7 million in primary education, 4 million in preparatory education, 3 million in secondary education and 2 million in tertiary education • 807,000 teachers, • and 37,000 schools Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

8. Community involvement Community involvement aims at encouraging people to become agents, rather than being treated as “target groups” or passive recipients of benefits. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

9. Community involvement Community participation has been recognized as an important and significant strategy for an efficient and effective utilization of limited resources in order to identify and solve problems in the education sector and to provide quality education for children. (Pailwar and Mahajan, 2005) Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

10. "Without close articulation of and involvement with the family and larger community, schools will ultimately fail" (Family Involvement Partnership for Learning 1996, p. 14) Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

11. School & the Community The interactions between school and the community have two dimensions: to bring the community into the school and to bring the school into the community. (Patterson and Harwood, 1995) Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

12. The benefits of improving community collaborations with schools are: Davis, Deborah (2000) • Schools feel they are getting help from multiple sources: • Communities can unite around the shared responsibility of educating youth, and schools are able to expand the number of positive role models: • Community businesses can make people aware of their support for schools and families: Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

13. The Six Types of Partnerships Framework, developed by Joyce Epstein (1995) and her colleagues : • Type 1: Parenting: • Type 2: Communications: • Type 3: Volunteering: • Type 4: Learning at Home: • Type 5: Decision-making: • Type 6: Collaborating with the Community: Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

14. Community involvement in education in the Egyptian context: The MOE has paid much attention to the following (NCERD, 2004): Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

15. Getting the civil society to understand the problems and impediments from which education suffers, sharing the responsibility of helping schools to improve the quality of educational product, and appreciating the achievements realized by the educational institution. • Maximizing the benefit from the sources utilized in the educational process and raising material support for schools. • Inducing both teachers and students to improve the quality of education and creating better attitudes of parents and community towards school. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

16. National Standards of Education In Egypt A national project aiming to set comprehensive quality education standards in Egypt and raising awareness about quality learning. According to this project, each school has the autonomy to decide on the processes/strategies by which these goals and outcomes will be accomplished. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

17. Fieldsof the Document TheEffectiveSchool TheEducator Excellent Ed. Management Communityparticipation CurriculumandLearningOutcome Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

18. DOMAINS OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION Partnership with families Serving the community Mobilizing the resources of local community Voluntary work Public relations and communication with community Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

19. First Domain : Partnership with families • Encourage participation of parents in educational decision-making and their effective involvement in drawing up a future vision for the school and in the implementation of its various programs • Facilitate communication between parents and members of the community working in the school • Inform parents of the educational and learning practices that take place in school • Encourage parents to voice their opinions on the educational service provided to their children. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

20. SecondDomain: Serving the community • Determine the needs of the community from school as well as making plans for community participation and evaluating them. • Use buildings and school resources for providing services and social activities • Implement social programs and projects in the local community . Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

21. Third Domain : Mobilizing the resources of the local community • Utilize available community resources to implement school educational programs • Obtain material assistance for educational institutions and schools from the local community, companies, and business community Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

22. Fourth Domain : Voluntary work • Implement programs encouraging voluntary work inside and outside school • Create programs to help volunteers participate in school projects • Provide the mechanisms to organize voluntary work for parents and citizens to support the educational and social activities in the school Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

23. Fifth Domain : Public relations and communication withcommunity • Adopt strategies and regulations encouraging interaction among members of the educational institution and ensure its continuity • Conduct regular communication between the educational administration and the other sectors in the community. • Adopt strategies and elaborate regulations encouraging and ensuring interaction with the media to achieve performance Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

24. The MOE set out to consolidate the experiment of Boards of Trustees to emphasize the importance of community participation in taking the educational decision and to enable the community to contribute effectively to forming the future policy for schools and implementing diverse programs. Thus, according to the MOE the BOT is intended to play a vital role in supporting the educational process in schools. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

25. The BOT is formed by a group of: businessmen, members of NGOs, active persons in public work, parents, and teachers. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

26. Methodology • Data collection instrument: semi structured interviews as a research instrument employed in the qualitative analysis. • Research sample, an interview schedule was conducted with a group of 63 teachers, deputy head teachers, head teachers from nine secondary schools in Damietta Governorate in Egypt. • The interviewees selected from each school to represent the school administration (head teachers and deputy head teachers), school staff (head subject teachers and newly appointed teachers), and BOT members. • The interview included two main parts about the role of BOT in community involvement in education. The first part investigated how efficient the role of the BOT in community involvement is. The second part focused on the barriers that limit this role. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

27. Findings: Early Findings of the study are organised to include: • First: Efficiency of the BOT participation in schools ; • Second: Barriers and problems that impede the effective involvement of the BOT in schools Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

28. First: Efficiency of the BOT participation in schools: The majority of the interviewees confirmed that the BOT is very important and involved in many ways. The BOT helps in the community and field services and provides school with some of its needs either by the donations given by the BOT members themselves or by organizing campaigns for fund raising. The BOT can help in getting some of the most difficult bureaucratic approvals as some of its members occupy highly outstanding positions which enable them to obtain such approvals. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

29. The BOT members always offer their services and ready to help. “ Most BOT members are cooperative and very interested in the educational process” A female HT. The BOT contributes to moving into decentralization ( for instance buying apparatus and lab materials) The BOT takes some actions over a wide range of students’ behavioral problems such as talkativeness, reluctance to work hard, absenteeism which is very obvious in secondary schools. The BOT members attempts to solve schools problems, if any, with the Directorate or any other authorities in the Governorate. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

30. Examples of the BOT Participation as viewed by the interviewees: • Participating in forming the school vision and mission. • Organizing celebrations to honor the talented and distinguished students and celebrations on some religious occasions such as the Prophet’s birthday, • Building and furnishing a prayer room, • Awarding outstanding teachers and encouraging them to give more, • Maintenance of the school buildings (e.g. toilets), Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

31. Holding some awareness lectures for students (e.g. absenteeism, drug abuse) • Providing the school garden with its needs, planting trees • Organizing and sponsoring cultural contests financially, • Taking some action against naughty students, • Hiring some part time teachers, • Increasing the school financial resources, • Moving bad teachers from school Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

32. Some problems limiting the role of BOT: Some of the BOT decisions cannot be put into effect. There was some evidence that some HTs viewed the BOT as a source of threat to their authority. Some of the BOT members were viewed as rather negative. One participant especially the BOT head exerts a greater degree of control over the direction and content of discussions in meetings. Some members do not attend meetings regularly. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

33. Members who should be elected are sometimes chosen with no real election in some schools! Lack of awareness of the BOT role among school staff, parents, and community members. Some members of the BOT are just primarily concerned for the welfare of their own child, and that is what motivates them to be involved in school events. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

34. Conclusion Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

35. Thank you Comments and Discussion Dr Ahmed El-Zeki

36. Dr Ahmed El-Zeki