Standards-Based Educational Management and Recognition to Improve the Quality of Pre-service Education

Abstract

Jhpiego, an affiliate of the Johns Hopkins University, is an international non governmental organization supporting ministries of health and education of Ethiopia in capacity building programs. The objective of the study was to initiate standards based educational quality management and recognition (SBEM-R) in higher institutes. Between October 15 and November 25, Jhpiego conducted onsite orientation workshops on standards-based educational management and recognition (SBEM-R) at three public universities and facilitated formation of SBEM-R teams. The teams assessed the status of medical, nursing and midwifery education using the assessment tool in the seven respective schools under the universities. The tool has 62 educational standards in five areas, namely, classroom and practical instruction, clinical instruction and practice, assessment approaches, school infrastructure and teaching materials and educational management. The assessment findings revealed low achievement across all areas in the seven schools with a total average of 23.9%. Achievements by schools ranged from 17.9 % to 30.6 %. When computed by area, school infrastructure and teaching materials had the lowest score (11.4 %) followed by assessment approaches (13.3 %). The situation was almost similar across medical, nursing and midwifery schools. These findings lay the ground for the subsequent small and incremental quality improvement. The use of SBEM-R will help educators and students to actively participate and institutionalize educational quality improvement, as the tools are easy to use, and have both” what to do” and “how to do” components.