Mother of all report cards

The management system includes clear planning and performance targets set by each school at the start of the year, and greater transparency and fairness in assessments based on targets at the end, officials said.

Citing an example, the head of education monitoring service division (EMSD), Wangchuk Namgyel, said that a school would have to assess the net attendance of students, their access to schools, teachers’ and principal’s attendance, student drop-out rate, community involvement, student learning, and percentage of students involved in discipline problems.

“There’ll be proper records and information disseminated for timely support and intervention at the district and ministry levels,” he said.

The performance management system requires teachers to receive formal feedback from their principals or senior teachers at least once a month. Education officials said that the school would also submit reports on a teacher’s initiative or workload, their number of classes and students, and the students’ performance.

“Principals will review teacher’s targets together and then give ratings in front of him or her,” Wangchuk Namgyel said, adding that all assessments or appraisals would be based on evidence. “The system will allow principals and the ministry to better assess teachers to provide timely support or appreciation.”

Principals would also receive monitoring and feedback from respective DEOs at least once a month. DEOs, on the other hand, would review the progress of a school and submit a report to the dzongda and the ministry five times a year.

“We’re looking at a strengthened information link, where DEOs should be constantly reviewing all schools, principals and teachers and students under them,” the chief of EMSD said. “The ministry will examine incentives for teachers or principals based on school ratings and the targets achieved.”

Education officials also said that, rather than using a ‘one size fits all’ approach, the management system empowers teachers and head teachers to set up performance targets for their different schools. “This would provide the ministry clear areas of focus,” a planning officer said, adding that the three main pillars of the performance management was setting targets, measuring performance and rewarding performances.