Technical support to teachers: Mentoring as an intervention – The Himalayan Times

One of the rationales of federalism in Nepal is providing quality public services nearer to the people.

As such, the new constitution is the outcome of the people's aspiration to get basic services promptly through autonomous and self-ruled local institutions.

Throughout the ages, delivery of school education has always been at the core of governance. School education has thus been treated as a merit good and service.

Therefore, in line with the spirit of the constitution, the power and function of school education have been devolved to the local governments (LGs). In line with this, the government has taken three important decisions: abolished the concept and practice of Resource Centres and Resources Persons; reduced the 29 Education Training Centres to seven Provincial Education Centres; and done away with all the 75 District Education Offices.

A school is a unit that is located near to a community and the one and only institution directly responsible for the delivery of quality education to its pupils.

Among the many factors responsible for quality, one important and overriding one is the teacher.

Teachers make up a dynamic factor, whose professional commitment backed by action has a direct bearing on quality school education. Therefore, the professional development and technical expertise of the teachers are of paramount importance.

However, teachers and head-teachers equivocally opine that with the introduction of federalism, they have been made state orphans, with none to provide them technical support. Local governments, responsible for steering school education, have few education officers, who are primarily engaged in administrative work and find little time to visit schools. Although some LGs have hired resource persons on their own, this is not considered a sustainable solution.

The absence of resource centres and resource persons has created a vacuum where technical support is not available to the school teachers. Additionally, the provision of just seven provincial training centres, instead of 29, has also added another layer of hurdle in the professional development of the teachers.

All these provide few opportunities for school teachers' professional development and the much-needed technical support, impacting the quality of education.

One notable point is that the constitution has made education the right of every child as against the welfare approach of the former constitutions. This means it is the state's obligation to provide education services to the pupils, but the three decisions mentioned above have taken services away from the people.

It is also evident that the percentage of fully trained teachers in the community schools has reached over 98.2 per cent at the primary level and over 95 per cent at the secondary level. However, research backed by experience reveals that these training efforts have not helped meet the desired objective, as teachers continue to employ the rote method and teacher-centric classroom activities.

Amid these challenges, there is a ray of hope. For instance, the School Sector Development Plan (SSDP) and the draft of the School Education Sector Plan (SESP) have specifically mentioned the provision of teacher mentoring as an intervention in schools. This will be a school-based initiative where a more experienced person, or with specific expertise, will help and guide a less experienced one. This should be a more efficient, effective and sustainable mechanism in line with the mandate of the LGs along with strong international evidence on improving teachers' effectiveness.

School-based management has always been at the core of every strategic plan of education, be it the School Sector Reform Plan (SSRP) or the SSDP and the forth-coming 10-year SESP.

Keeping all these in perspective, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has initiated teacher mentoring in subjects like Mathematics, Science and English from Grades six to eight. Two rural and two urban municipalities of Lumbini and Bagmati Provinces have been selected, targeting 20 schools from each of the municipalities for the initial phase. The final goal is to expand the system to all the LGs.

The foremost challenge in sustaining the system is helping novice teachers gain the required teaching skills and knowledge, at both the content and process level. Mentoring, simply, is meant to help attract, motivate and develop novice teachers to perform higher in schools and transform them into learning and performing institutions.

Mentoring for novice teachers will also act as an induction activity so that they can acclimatise to the new environment.

The responsibility, therefore, lies with the LGs once it is successfully piloted. A desirable step to this end could be to inspire the LGs to adopt the system and incentivise and capacitate the mentors with some pecuniary arrangement and orientation workshop, respectively.

The orientation of mentors is of great importance in developing a shared understanding about the nature, process and methods of mentoring aimed at developing a cordial relationship between the mentor and mentee(s).

The mentor also needs to be supported financially so that they can provide regular support to the mentees through in-person or virtual meetings. Since prospective mentors will also represent practising teachers, extra precaution is needed in selecting teachers of repute so that the mentees feel professionally comfortable with them.

The mentoring system allows the mentors to experience the inner satisfaction of having shared their skills and also be recognised as one to develop personally and professionally.

The mentoring system should help experienced teachers to emerge as education leaders and novice teachers as successors, with the resultant effect of increased pupils' learning achievement.

Thapa is former Secretary of Education

A version of this article appears in the print on April 22, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.

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Technical support to teachers: Mentoring as an intervention - The Himalayan Times