Assessing the level of cognitive knowledge in English of the staff and teachers of Non-Formal Primary Education Programme of BRAC

Abstract

This paper aimed at identifying job-related background factors of the staff and the teachers of BRAC education programme, determining their level of cognitive knowledge in English and finding relationship between the job-related factors and subject knowledge. BRAC recently has extended its curriculum from three years to four years to cover full five-year cycle of primary education. The main objective of the expansion is to mainstream the BRAC graduates with formal education system. BRAC has introduced the English textbook of class m in its schools, and has develop a teachers guide based on the it. BRAC also started a training programme based on the teachers guide for the teachers as well as supervising staff to develop their teaching and supervisory skills on the new teaching system. The data for this paper were taken from the study of Higher Education Link project for more elaborate analysis, where 13 Programme Organizers, 5 Junior Programme Organizers, and 111 teachers of three NFPE teams were given a test on English. The test instrument was developed on the basis of the textbook and contained 100 marks. The findings show that on average, the Programme Organizers obtained 64.0, the Junior Programme Organiser 76.4 and the teachers 39.0 scores respectively. The job related factors, year of schooling, number of lessons covered by training sessions and job experience of the respondents were positively correlated with the subject knowledge. Although the achievement levels of the respondents were not satisfactory, they have further scope in learning and practicing English in the classroom while they will be supervising and/or teaching.