Generation of effective learning for development
Education is anchored as one of the Millennium Development Goals. It is still true that rural and remote areas often benefit less from the national budgets on education. Modernisation efforts do not reach sufficiently these areas where teachers are often badly motivated because of delayed payments, negligence in attention from the Ministry, poor working conditions.
Although the number of children going to school is increasing, the number of girls has not yet reached its target values. Arrears in primary education continue to be seen in secondary, vocational and higher education.
In 2004, MDF acquired STOAS International, a group of consultants with specific experiences in Education and Rural Development. With their expertise MDF has since then, increased its involvement in education-linked assignments. At the moment we are involved in about at least eight Nuffic funded long term projects dealing with vocational training institutes and universities. This spread over different continents: Latin America, Africa and Asia. In these projects, MDF acts as the process facilitator, offers expertise in all aspects of institutional development and include where needed in a flexible way the expertise from relevant (inter)national universities.
MDF Experience
Over the last years, MDF has built experience in assisting the senior management of education institutes in strengthening their capacity to give leadership to their institute: strategic planning, teambuilding, financial management, setting up human resource systems & procedures, defining monitoring & evaluation systems etc. This is often accompanied by the development of manuals which reflect the rules and regulations.
We have been training and assisting educators on the introduction of Competency Based Learning (CBL), followed by
coaching and assistance for its integration in the whole education system. Also workshops for teachers for the
development of proper assessment/examination methods and assignments have been given.
Labour market studies have been done (sometimes with the students themselves) for the development of new curricula
and/or adjustment of existing curricula.
Our challenge
Our continuous challenge is to assist education managers to pick up the challenges which accompany the introduction of new curricula (whether Bachelor, Masters or others), of new insights in ways of learning and other education development. This to integrate these changes in the education-system and to get them anchored and owned by the institute itself.
Learning for development is the key! At all levels.
