EDU Q-card

Increasing numbers of children and adolescents in develo- ping countries acquire basic academic and life skills as a result of progressing through primary and secondary education. This allows them to prosper as individuals and to contribute to the development of their communities. That is the power of sustainable, high-quality education. But how is this achieved? The EDU Q-card is a tool which puts schools at the centre of quality education. It enables the assessment of education provided, pinpointing areas where quality can be
improved. EDU Q-card works in conjunction with Edukans to offer targeted advice and support to schools and/or government to ensure that the outcomes of assessments are properly evaluated and improvements made which will lead to a higher quality of education. The EDU Q-card is a means of assessing the quality of education being provided and of giving control over the process back to schools.

The EDU Q-card evaluates five crucial areas of good education in order to achieve better learning outcomes. The following factors are key to achieving lasting success:
• a safe and inclusive learning environment

• efficient and effective learning activities;

• well-trained teachers;

• professional school management;

• parents and community engagement

The success of the EDU Q-card depends on direct support and training. Edukans and its partners in the focus countries offer  support and training to end users such as school inspectors, PTC Tutors, Quality Assurance Officers and Curriculum Support Officers. Refresher courses – both for content and technical aspects – are a standard part of the EDU Q-card.

 

EDUstars: five pillars to high quality education

Good, future proof education for children starts with a safe, enabling learning environment and home-support. That is why Edukans developed EDUstars: a comprehensive school quality model that is used worldwide. It analyses and improves the five ‘pillars’ that determine quality education:

Assessment and improvement

Edukans maps schools along these five pillars involving all stakeholders. An initial step is assessing the quality of schools on the five dimensions of quality education. Edukans makes use of the EDU Q-card, an online tool to assess the quality of education and monitor quality developments. Part of the process is a joint school improvement plan. The mapping is repeated every year to monitor progress. A school that shows high scores on all pillars is a high quality school that is able to offer a high-level learning environment for its students. EDUstars is a useful methodology to jointly work on good quality and relevant education, where children can live their full potential. Through different interventions we aim to improve the quality of the five ‘pillars’. Edukans also provides Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) as part of our STARlearner interventions to teach children about relationships, children’s rights, sexuality and love, prevention of HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy, and harmful traditional practices like early marriage. We work both with interactive live lessons and computer lessons – thus training IT skills as well. Edukans together with Rutgers developed a curriculum for CSE for children at secondary schools (age 12-19 years): the World Starts With Me and for children at primary schools (age 9-14 years):My World My Life. Many of our interventions are focused on improving the quality of education through training teachers. We Train STARteachers on how to Become a STARteacher which contributes to long-term sustainable improvements of the educational experts and teaching quality in developing countries.

 

How we work

With over 15 years of experience, we built a solid theory of change that is guiding our work for quality education.