At CMCA, it is not enough to just run the programmes that we set out to run at the beginning of the academic year. We place special emphasis on monitoring our progress through the year, so that we can track the efficacy of our citizenship programmes and methods of instruction. We use the results from reporting and monitoring to understand the effects of what we teach, improve our curriculum, train our educators better, and determine the areas in which to focus our policy advocacy.
CMCA quality assurance in citizenship education programmes has been thought out and developed over the years. All our volunteer educators are expected to record information based on certain parameters after each session they teach, and we administer questionnaires before and after our programmes to students in order to understand the impact of our curriculum on their knowledge and attitudes. Our steady commitment to quality assurance and monitoring has allowed us to consistently make sure our programmes are the best they can be.
There are five main ways in which we monitor our quality and make efforts to improve our citizenship education.
We place substantial emphasis on the impact of our programmes and interventions in order to
The results are used to feed and improve the programmes and the curriculum. The results highlight topics and methodology that were both successfully and unsuccessfully delivered. We see that the topics on which students have done well can be correlated to good teaching and good content, and vice versa.
This analysis is conducted by the curriculum development team, after which corrective steps are taken. This analysis is communicated to the educators and volunteers who deliver the programmes. Again, corrective measures are taken where needed. Secondly, we share school scores with the educators and volunteers. This analysis is done by the programme management teams with their volunteers, and improves the efficacy of the educators.
We follow a rigorous process of reporting in order to keep track of the progress of our programmes, and provide feedback to the curriculum development team. The following are the types of reports used, and their purposes.
It is mandatory for all educators to undergo curriculum and classroom management training. These training sessions are conducted prior to the start of the programme and again mid-year. Our in-house trainers conduct these trainings, with the aim of ensuring that all volunteer educators are teaching at the high standards set by CMCA. By training our educators, we are ensuring a uniformly good standard of instruction for all our young citizens, so that each child has the opportunity to spark change as an informed, thinking, active citizen. There is also an end-of-year review session for all volunteer educators.
Mentoring educators is an ongoing process that is conducted by the programme management teams, curriculum development team, and the training team. Through the mentoring process, we help the educator to work on areas of focus such as fairness, conduct, content, and engagement with students.
Building the capacity of educators to impart important lessons to children and youth on Citizenship and Life Skills is an important objective for CMCA. The more educators there are who can convey these crucial values to young people, the more young people can benefit from this vital sphere of education.
CMCA is deeply committed to embracing new ideas and innovative alternatives – we have always evolved and grown because of this. There are 3 platforms provided on Google Forms to ensure that feedback given will be recorded by the Curriculum Development Team. This feedback is routinely checked and incorporated wherever appropriate. Some of the things we ask educators to make special note of are below:
CMCA has been accredited by Credibility Alliance under the category “Desirability Norms” – for good governance, accountability, transparency and continuous improvements. Credibility Alliance is a consortium of voluntary organisations committed to enhancing accountability and transparency in the voluntary sector through good governance.
