REGIONAL FORUM ON SCHOOL-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS FOR EDUCATIONAL QUALITY EMPOWERMENT

THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF QUALITY EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT is to provide quality education for all. To achieve this, family and community interventions, local empowerment and community action, as well as strengthening partnerships and mobilizing resources have been cited in many EFA documents as important considerations.

The current thrust of the SEAMEO Council is to explore how schools can effectively engage communities for more meaningful involvement in improving the quality of education in schools. SEAMEO INNOTECH and the French Government, through the Office of the regional Counselor for Cooperation and the French Embassy in the Philippines, had this thrust in mind when they organized the Regional Forum on School-Community Partnerships for Educational Quality Improvement on February 9-11, 2004.

The three-day event convened 24 representatives of SEAMEO member countries, including a representative from France, to share a wide range of experiences in how to make school community partnerships work.

The forum aimed to gather information from SEAMEO member countries regarding promising practices in developing and sustaining school-community partnerships that help improve school and student outcomes. These experiences were synthesized into a model to guide member countries in planning and implementing successful and sustainable partnerships.

Participants were on in saying that school-community partnerships contribute towards quality improvement by making better resources available to enable capacity building for teachers and better learning for students.

An environment where these partnerships can flourish will need to have policies and strategies concerned with recognition, communication, incentives, training, planning, and profiling of the community.

By recognition is meant the effort to encourage stakeholders' involvement, promote active leadership, and identify areas for improvement. A communication policy is intended to make parents and stakeholders understand what the school is doing for their children. Tax incentives will serve as additional encouragement to increase the support of business groups. Proper collaboration will also require a good action plan that set out clear guidelines; identify outcomes clearly; ensure that planned activities are carried out; and provide bases for monitoring and evaluation. A training policy will allow for sharing of experiences while family profiles help in project planning and management.

Implementing these strategies will start with an assessment of needs to set the criteria for infrastructure, resources, and teacher training. The next step is to develop an action plan where sources of support are identified. A communication plan will need to be developed as well before the partnership initiative is fully implemented and continuously reviewed.

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