What are New Generation Schools?
NGS schools, are similar to Charter schools in the United States or Academy schools in the UK though operating them within the developing world presents additional challenges. The New Generation School programme is an innovative initiative that has contextualized the Charter School concept to the education systems of developing counties.
NGS schools are secular public schools which are directly funded by the relevant Department of Education and the NGS foundation, managed by the NGS leadership and independent of local authority or central government day to day control. By transferring school governance from inefficient, underfunded and sometimes corrupt, local government control to independent boards, the NGS initiative creates positive change in the entire education landscape of a country.
NGS schools are open to all no matter of social or economic situation but have a rigorous selection program that fully accounts for the impact of poverty on a student’s performance.
For the first three to five years of investment, NGS schools are completely free, but when they start their fourth to sixth year of operation, they seek voluntary support fees from parents. In many developing countries parents ordinarily pay either official or unofficial contributions towards their child’s education and so this does not place too much of a burden on parents. For those parents who cannot afford to pay anything, a Social Equity Fund pays in their stead. However even those families that cannot contribute financially are expected to contribute in other ways, such a volunteering at the school, doing in kind activities etc.. Students likewise are expected to show their commitment to the NGS program in terms of doing extra hours of study each week and being an active participant of the school and its extra-curricular activities.
New Generation Schools themselves must undergo an accreditation process that validates their high educational standards. This accreditation is key to ensuring that parents are receiving high quality education for their children, which in turn strengthens the ability of schools to negotiate limited financial support from parents.
By delivering exceptional standards of teaching and management, NGS transforms existing public schools into centres of educational excellence and enables them to achieve high levels of performance, particularly in key areas like STEM Education and English Language. New Generation Schools are governed by five key principles including Strict Accountability, Higher Teaching Standards, Validated Performance through Accreditation, Rationalized Resource Allocation, and Operational Autonomy. Within this framework, Accountability leads the list and makes investment in schools conditional on high performance.
Why is NGS needed?
In many developing countries, public schools chronically underperform because there is often a chromic lack of resources, skilled and experienced leadership, suitably trained teachers, and suitable equipped classrooms and schools.
In most developing countries the main problems stem from poor governance. Corruption is often endemic within the system. Many teaching positions are bought, or teaching positions paid to ghost teachers who never attend school. It is also commonplace in some countries for students to have to pay ‘unofficial’ fees to register at schools, for their exam papers, and for mandatory private tutoring.
On a day-to-day level, these problems stifle the development of the very skills young people need to thrive in the 21st century. With under-resourced and poorly incentivized teachers many schools are unable to encourage the critical thinking or promote the participatory learning known to improve outcomes. Each year the dysfunctional system demotivates tens of thousands of young people, who emerge with little vision or capacity to improve their own fortunes, or those of their country.
Development assistance has been provided to some countries. But even where development assistance has been received, there is often a lack accountability in the way that the funds are invested. Additional development assistance is often not made conditional on the high performance of schools that have already received it. Investment without accountability is almost always a futile venture. Under such conditions, development assistance rarely yields the results that were originally intended.
At the same time, state bureaucracies can limit the extent to which schools can make fundamental changes to the school environment or foster innovation. Such limitations include constraints in changing the hours of study, hiring and firing practices, and the selection of curriculum documents and textbooks, among many others. These systemic rigidities in public education systems create a disincentive for innovation and limits the potential of development assistance to be used to optimum effect.
NGS programming addresses the problems recounted above by giving selected schools the autonomy they need to eliminate bureaucratic disincentives for innovation while at the same linking the allocation of resources to high performance. NGS motivates and incentivises its teachers with additional stipends, training and career development. New Generation Schools are not given a blank check when they receive development assistance; rather, they must achieve standards of high performance as a condition of the resources that they receive. The achievement of these standards must be validated through a rigorous accreditation process (usually after two or three years of investment) that is administered by a special Oversight Board comprised of members from both the state and non-state sector.