The CERCA school report card: communities creating education quality - final report

Participatory school improvement: successes in Central America

By: Flórez Guio A, Chesterfield R & Siri C
Published by: Academy for Educational Development (AED), 2006
Via: Eldis

The CERCA school report card (SRC) model provides a framework to support parents, teachers, students, and community leaders to work together to collect and analyse information about their schools, using simple indicators and self-assessment tools, to develop school improvement and monitoring plans to improve classroom quality. This report describes the experience of developing and implementing the SRC model in five pilot countries: the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. It summarises the major findings, successful procedures, and implications of the experience for the region, and compares the SRC approach with other programmes to improve education quality. Key findings from the report are:

• the SRC model was effective in increasing community participation to discuss findings
• changes relating to quality suggested by the school community were addressed by participating schools
• around a third of nominated actions related to improving reading and writing
• the SRC generated results within a short timeframe, and almost all participating schools will continue to utilise the model without support from CERCA, suggesting that it is a sustainable approach
• skills gained by participants trained during the programme empowered communities to develop their own school management tools
• all parents, including those who could not read or write took on new roles, such as actively participating in analysis group discussions, monitoring the attendance and punctuality of students, and creating appropriate learning settings for children to do homework in their homes
• because external facilitation is minimal and there are no recurrent costs, the SRC process is cost-effective, in comparison to other programs funded by USAID
  

The report also observes that, to increase the reach of the CERCA SRC approach, and to ensure that it is sustainable, it will be essential to develop the active the involvement of, and ownership by ministries of education.

(http://www.aed.org/ToolsandPublications/upload/
AED%20CERCA%20SRC%20Final%20Report.pdf)