School Improvement Planning and Effective Intervention from District Education Bureau in Laos—to Become Learning Communities

Abstract

In this study, effective activities to improve enrolment and students learning achievement in public primary schools in Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos) are discussed through the discourse of School-Based Management (SBM), school effectiveness and learning communities. Achieving Education for All and Millennium Development Goals is one of the country's priority policy areas, and reaching the unreached and decreasing dropout and repetition are the urgent issue for education development in Laos. The research method is “a pragmatic approach” (Robson, 2011, p. 27) and “multi-strategy designs” (Robson, 2011, p. 29), which are often mentioned as mixed-methods. The quantitative study investigates 90 target schools of Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) and qualitative study includes interview of teachers, principals and Village Education Development Committees (VEDC).

The effective activities in improving NER and students' learning achievements at the school level in the context of Lao public primary schools, and effective interventions from DESB were studied. The study confirmed several important factors to develop learning communities in Lao public primary schools: the DESB's monitoring to schools; the need for training, coaching and mentoring on detailed methods of activities to develop learning communities; encouraging the shift of teachers' concept about children's learning and securing a sufficient number of teachers and textbooks without spending from school block grants on textbooks.

These effective activities and factors for improving NER and decreasing dropout and repetition rates are quite similar to the conditions for effective schools. Therefore, in order for SBM to bring about the expected effects in school improvement, MoES and each level of local education authorities need to develop these conditions and support developing learning communities in schools.