School Improvement

Schools are at the heart of our mission to improve children's learning. We analyze what is needed and help to deliver all the key elements: from curriculum development and the training of teachers and school managers to literacy and numeracy schemes and student assessment. Our education specialists at Cambridge Education view school improvement in the round and adopt an integrated approach involving better governance and leadership, training and teaching, assessment, and use of the school curriculum.

Teacher Development & Management

Our assistance can run through the spectrum of recruitment, training, and deployment, using a variety of incentives tailored to local circumstances: such as providing decent housing. We work with head teachers on how to manage their staff to ensure that they turn up for work and know what they are doing – preparing lesson plans, setting homework and giving pupils feedback – and provide follow-up support and ongoing monitoring and professional development.

Curriculum & Textbook Development

We have extensive experience in helping educators to review and revise the school curriculum to keep pace with global developments. We can help devise typically less-traditional curricula that address what young people need to be learning, this could include prevocational training. Once a curriculum is approved, we can provide new textbooks to assist in teaching it, and training in how best to employ the textbooks and deliver new lessons.

Literacy & Numeracy

Being able to read, write and count to certain minimum standards is fundamental to all other learning: without the basics it is not possible to develop higher skills. We work with governments to put in place literacy and numeracy programs, particularly in early grades, which equip children to study further.

Student Assessment

We advise primarily on the technical aspects of student assessment and evaluation. For example, where a survey is being used, the sample has to be representative of the country as a whole. The test questions must elicit what is intended, and must be administered properly to avoid cheating or getting incomplete returns. The results have to be entered into a database and the data cleaned, before they can be analyzed and reported on.

Innovative technology

We are helping teachers to harness their potential, for example by delivering lesson plans direct to their handsets along with audio and video teaching materials that they can then share with their classes.

Low Cost Private Education In Nigeria

Where education systems are of poor quality, large numbers of children do not attend state schools. Instead their parents are opting for low-cost private education. In Lagos, Nigeria, we are working to improve the quality of education delivered in these schools by improving the functioning of the market in which they operate.

Whole School Development

In Gambia we introduced a whole school development approach, which initially involved the participatory development of a Gambian model of school transformation, involving head teachers, teachers, boy and girl students, mothers and fathers, and other community members.

Helping 25 Million Bangladeshis Improve Their English

Television dramas, mobile phones, and iPods are the unconventional tools being used to help a sixth of Bangladesh’s 160 million population to improve their English. BioCore Consulting is leading a nine-year program aimed at teaching many of the poorest people in Bangladesh vocational English as a route into work and out of poverty.