The Bhutanese Leading the way.
During the five-day-long education conference which concluded on Thursday, the conference rolled out significant plans.
The education minister Lyonpo Jai Bir Rai said that the major reforms in the education sector for the year 2019 would be doing away with Saturday classes and professional development program for primary schools teachers- which have been endorsed during the education conference. The proposal to do away with cutoff points for class 10 has also been endorsed.
No Saturday Class
“From the coming 2019 academic year teachers will get more time for effective teaching in the class,” said Lyonpo JB Rai.
The 19th national education conference endorsed doing away with the Saturday instructional classes in all the schools in Bhutan.
He said the reform has been carried out with the main intention to improve the teaching-learning process in the class, which will contribute to the quality of education the student receives. However, with the move, he said, the school management should develop strategic plans to improve the teaching-learning process keeping in mind the vision and mission of the Ministry.
No exams and professional development program for formative assessment for teachers
Doing away with the examinations for the classes PP to III from 2020 academic session and the change in the assessing process for class PP-III from summative to formative assessment process has also been endorsed.
Lyonpo JB Rai said the professional development program for all the primary school teachers for the formative assessment would start from the coming year.
For that, he said the Royal Education Council (REC), Bhutan Council of School Examination and Assessment (BCSEA), Ministry of Education (MoE) and other relevant stakeholders shall start preparing all the assessment process and professional development programs for primary school teachers. “All the initiatives are to be taken at doing away with the conventional cognitive methods of assessing the students’ academic performance called summative methods to the non-conventional method of more holistic approach of assessing the capabilities and aptitudes of our children through the formative assessment process.”
“This initiative would immensely benefit our children and parents through constantly reporting the parents about the children’s both cognitive and non-cognitive development processes,” he said. Furthermore, he said the children will be more critically assessed and channelized their talents in the right directions as they grow and go up to the higher classes. “These initiatives are taken keeping in mind the vision and mission of Education Ministry”.
Another major reform for the coming year he said would be Technical and Vocational Education and Training which would be there for those who cannot make cut-off point. However, he said the work is still in progress.
He said this would transform the economic scenario with the change in the academic-based education system to Edu-Skill Based Education Systems for which the MOE would collaborate with other relevant agencies like Ministry of Labour and Human Resource (MoLHR), Royal University of Bhutan (RUB), REC and BCSEA.
“MOE took this bold decision to transform the education systems to make Bhutanese locally rooted and internationally competent citizen of the country.”
