AN INTRODUCTION TO BEFARE CURRICULUM FOR OUT OF SCHOOL CHILDREN

With a school drop out rate of fifty per cent at primary level, the defects in education system of Pakistan are evident. Most of the drop out and complete lack of access to education services occurs at an early age or in early stage of schooling, leading to a huge caseload of out school children. A host of problems affect Pakistan 's performance in education. One obvious reason for the loss of interest in children's schooling is that little attention has been paid to the quality and relevance of education that children receive in both the private and public sectors.

It is generally observed that non-formal education activities are not usually credentialing all the processes of formal education and their graduates therefore cannot compete effectively with graduates of formal education. It is also assumed that actual learning objectives of comparable formal and non-formal education programmes may be similar but the organizational framework and the educational delivery system, employed to pursue them are strikingly different in structure, instructional methods, materials, finance and duration.

The Research and Development (R&D) Department at BEFARe undertook comprehensive review of existing material and curriculum and endeavored to design a child friendly and accelerated curriculum, which address needs of out of school children.

he BEFARe developed curriculum offers non-formal education to 9+ aged group children by offering learning materials in lines with the formal system curriculum in Pakistan . The intention is that those Pakistani children, who have wasted four to six years of their school age, are able to join secondary education (at grade VI) after completing two and a half years non-formal school programme

PURPOSE OF THE SUDY 

• To review, develop and consolidate written text materials for primary school aged children.
• To design and develop visual helping materials.
• To compose the materials according to the approved rules.
• To organize a workshop for the master trainers to make the implementation of the materials effective.

SCOPE

The materials are useful and applicable at Primary level in rural as well as urban areas for the 9+ aged group children.

TASK SPECIFICATION

The major task was divided into three successive phases.

Phase I

Assess, develop, consolidate and compose the text materials Non Formal Educational materials suitable to the Pakistani situation.

Phase II

Assess, select and develop teaching helping visual aids to implement the developed text effectively.

Phase III

Organize Capacity Building workshop for the master trainers to.

•  Develop awareness of the new materials (methods and approaches)

•  Apply innovative methods and approaches in the classrooms.

•  Implement the materials effectively, improving the learning achievements of the children.

PROCEDURE APPLIED

I. All the available / existing non-formal materials developed by different agencies in Pakistan were reviewed to analyze their objectives, content selection, procedures, organization of the materials, presentation techniques, evaluation processes and their relevance with the objectives.

II. A review is made of the National Curriculum for Class I-V developed by Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad for the formal education programme.

III. All the Primary School text books, work books, and guidebooks of N.W.F.P. and Punjab are reviewed to identify the principles of curriculum development.

The following materials were developed after assessing the existing formal and non-formal contents.

•  First Book of Urdu covering all the concepts included in the curriculum of classes Kachi, I and II.

*  The concepts of S. Studies are integrated with the Urdu Book I.

•  Second Book of Urdu covering all the concepts included in the curriculum of Class III and IV.

2.  Two books in Mathematics.

•  First Book of Mathematics covering all the concepts included in the curriculum of class Kachi, I and II.

•  Second Book of Mathematics covering all the concepts of the curriculum included in Class III and IV.

3  Two books in Science.

•  First Book of Science covering all the concepts included in the curriculum of Class I and II.

•  Second Book of Science covering all the concepts included in the curriculum of Class III and IV.

•  No change was made in the books of Islamiyat, English and Social Studies because these books are according to the national curriculum, are brief and contain no overlapping concepts.

•  Evaluative activities and guidelines to the teachers were given along with the learning materials (text materials) in each text book of Urdu, Mathematics and Science.

•  The time duration was set for each book as under:-

One year duration to cover,

•  First Book of Mathematics

•  First Book of Science

•  Islamiyat I and II

•  English I and II

One year duration to cover,

•  2 nd Book of Mathematics

•  2 nd Book of Science

•  Islamiyat III and IV

•  English III and IV

•  S. Studies III and IV

Six months duration to cover,

•  All the books offered at 5 th grade in N.W.F.P. Public Schools.

Note: The duration is envisaged to be 2 ½ years instead of 6 years of Primary level due to the fact that the learning days in Public Schools are estimated at 185 (excluding holidays). In BEFARe non-formal schools, these working days will be 180 as no provision of holidays has been kept in this system.

 

CHARACTERISTICS OF DEVELOPED MATERIALS

Text Materials

All the quality principles of curriculum development and content selection were followed. BEFARe developed materials are inline with the current curriculum being offered at Primary level in Pakistan .

The major element of a curriculum is the content selected for a particular level. It plays an important role in enhancing knowledge, developing desired skills and bringing about the needed changes in the learners attitudes. Although, BEFARe does not consider the curriculum development process as rigid and static, but at the same time it is not fair to change the whole curriculum specially the text materials abruptly. Contents have been developed carefully by following the relevant strategies and principles of textbook writing. The non-formal text materials in all the three subjects i.e. Urdu, Mathematics and Science possess the following key characteristics:-

•  The materials are arranged in a logical order proceeding from concrete to abstract, easy to difficult, known to unknown, general to specific.

•  The contents possess vertical as well as horizontal continuity and are in consonance with the curriculum objectives.

•  Though content validity is kept high, yet the materials can be covered within specified time.

•  The cognitive, domains of the curriculum match with the cognitive level of the children satisfying their psychological needs.

•  The contents provide practical experiences to the children with special reference to Pakistani situation and improvement of quality of life.

•  The contents meet the requirements of the learners in relation with their entrance into the secondary education.

•  The contents selected, provide sufficient opportunities for the development of necessary skills interests and attitudes, satisfying individual and community needs.

•  The materials reflect the socio-economical, cultural and spiritual aspects of the community as well as develop awareness about various occupations in Pakistan .

•  The learning experiences are organized around pedagogical and psychological principles.

•  The materials reflect concern for taking regard of the rights of children, women and human with special reference to rural areas.

•  The contents are made attractive through coloured pictures.

•  Each book in Urdu, Mathematics or Science covers text materials, teachers' guidebooks and work book activities.

•  The materials are developed to encourage thinking power and creativity among the students through problem solving.

•  Activities suggested in all the books promote participatory approach and are learner friendly.

•  Due weightage is given to the basic skills both in Urdu and Mathematics.

•  A few topics are taken from the text books developed by NWFP Text Book Board.

•  Each lesson/chapter is followed by an exercise. The questions given in each exercise are of objective nature making the evaluation process valid and reliable.

•  The text books posses activities to be followed by the teachers during instructional process making the delivery process effective.

•  The text books contain activities to be followed by the students making the learning environment conducive.

•  The elements like, content, methods and evaluation are linked to achieve the subject matter objectives.

•  The books are technically sound considering quality of paper, size of books, visual aspect, composition, printing etc.

 

Helping Teaching Materials (Visual Aids)

•  Charts and flash cards are developed for alphabets in Urdu and English languages.

•  Picture charts are produced for discussion to enable the students to develop their skills of listening and speaking. Picture charts have also been developed to bring a sense of reality to what is taught, to stimulate interest, create correct impressions and make the lessons life related.

•  Certain open ended activities are planned for which flash cards are developed.

•  To make the Instructional process effective and interesting a variety of charts such as charts with pockets, charts with overlay pages, charts and flash cards with evaluative activities have also been developed.

•  All the flash cards and charts are made colorful to attract the students, reflect the concepts clearly and to enable the learners for differentiation/identification of the objects.

•  For the subject of mathematics charts, flash cards and working sheets are developed on the concepts of number, volume, shapes etc.

•  Geometrical shapes to illustrate three dimensional objects, have also been developed.

•  Charts have also been developed on the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

•  All the visual aids have been developed taking the following characteristics into consideration

•  Accuracy,

•  Relevancy,

•  Comprehensibility,

•  Interest,

•  Motivation, and

•  Realism

•  All the visual aids are prepared to:

•  create interest and motivate the students to learn,

•  translate the concepts into concrete form,

•  present exotic and historic materials,

•  present information about inaccessible places and large complicated or microscopic things, and

•  summarize a series of observation and systems of human body,

•  encourage active learning through group activities.

 

•  EVALUATION OF MATERIALS

Validity, objectivity and relevancy of the materials can only be judged after at least one year of its implementation, yet the materials were pre-tested in some of the schools from public as well as private sectors.

Simple questionnaires of alternate response type were prepared separately for the experts teachers and students (Annex A,B and C attached respectively).

To make the process scientific, analysis was made and percentages were calculated. The tables given as Annex. D, E and F show the frequencies of responses.

 

•  Findings Based on Experts Opinions

The developed materials were distributed among six /twenty experts working at different positions in public and private sectors.

Two of the experts consider the objectives as non-behavioural and stated unclear while rest of them say that the objectives set are well defined, clear and behavioural in nature.

As for as the contents are concerned, all of them appreciated them and agreed fully with the language used, pictures, activities suggested and techniques of evaluation.

They are also of the opinion that the contents satisfy the needs of the individuals as well as of the concern society.

Experts agreed that the contents provide ample opportunities to the learners for developing basic skills and desired attitudes to improve their quality of life.

 

•  Findings Based on Teachers Opinions

Keeping in view the experience of the teachers, they were asked to forward their opinion in relation to the usability and implementation of the contents.

Teachers agree that contents are according to the age level of the students.

Pictures given in the text develop the concepts and are interesting.

They agree that the contents help in developing positive attitudes towards peace education, health education and environmental education.

They also like the methods and techniques suggested to deal with the concept development process.

They agree that the suggested activities help in making the class active and providing a friendly environment.

   

•  Findings Based on Students' Responses

Ten students were interviewed after distributing some of the contents developed. All of them liked the colored pictures, activities, pair work and exercises.

Students expressed that materials are easy to understand as the language is simple.

They found the topics interesting and motivational.