Implementation of the School Improvement Program (SIP) in Addis Ababa City Administration: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

The quality of higher education can not be guaranteed with out ensuring the quality of education at the primary and secondary levels. School Improvement Programme (SIP) is one of the six pillars of the General Education Quality Improvement Package (GEQIP), that is intended to enhance the quality of education in the Ethiopian primary and secondary schools; which in turn will definitely have an impact on the quality of higher education. This study examined the implementation of the School Improvement Programme (SIP) in Addis Ababa City Administration and identified the achievements, challenges and prospects of the programme. Multistage Stratified Random Sampling Technique was used to select 264 primary and secondary school students, 234 primary and secondary school teachers from 24 schools in eight sub cities of Addis Ababa city Administration. Seventy experts at the kebele and sub-city education and training offices, city administration education office, and federal ministry of education levels also took part in the study as respondents. A blend of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to research has been used to conduct the study. About 99% of the distributed questionnaires were returned and data were analysed using SPSS. Although further efforts are needed to bring significant improvement, the study has shown that encouraging achievements have been made at the school level, with respect to the Learning and Teaching as well as the Leadership and Management Domains. However, achievements in School Environment and Community Involvement Domains were found very low. Furthermore, lack of school facility, insufficient budget, lack of the necessary awareness and practical involvement of the community, lack of trained teachers for special needs education, and lack of the necessary awareness and practical involvement of teachers were identified as some of the major challenges in implementing SIP. At present it was found that most of the schools covered by this study are at the Implementing/Functioning level of the School Improvement Programme, indicating that they have to work hard to rise to the embedded level. The study has also disclosed that the school improvement programme will have significant prospects in terms of enhancing the learning and teaching process, in bringing about a healthy and safe education environment, and in creating a strong partnership between the community/parents and the school; among others. In order to overcome the challenges and to realize the objectives of the programme, the study has recommended integrated efforts of all stakeholders of the programme mainly, the school community, the external community including parents and the Government.