Assistant teacher program/Partner school program/Assistant teacher program self-certification

“ It is vital that pupils are provided with structured opportunities to explore actively aspects, issues and events through school and community involvement, case studies and critical discussions that are challenging and relevant to their lives. ” — Crick Report

“ A curriculum which acknowledges the social responsibilities of education must present situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living together, and where observation and information are calculated to develop social insight and interest. ” — John Dewey, Democracy and Education

Wikiversity assistant teacher program self-certification

The self-certification of the assistant teacher program is a collection of recommendations that should be fulfilled by a school in order to be considered compliant. There is no verification process and schools are consequently free to use the self-certification as desired.

Verifiability

• To be compliant all required data for the verification of compliance of the school must be conveniently available to interested third parties.

Funding

• To be compliant a minimum of ten percent of the collected school fees must be donated to Unicef, Médecins Sans Frontières or very similar purposes. (This should probably be corrected for regional differences in funding, which is currently beyond the scope of the self-certification. Proposals are welcome.) The recommended donation goal is the donation of twenty percent of the collected school fees but that may not be feasible everywhere.
• Publicly funded schools without school fees should aim to raise funds according to ability.
• Publicly funded schools with additional school fees and/or other fees should aim to donate fifty percent of their additional income.

Documentation

Statistics

• The school must compile statistics of school and pupil performance.
• Statistics must cover especially the requirements of the self-certification insofar as possible.

School democracy

• School democracy must invite all pupils to participate by holding an office for some time and must provide for sufficient opportunity for participation.
• School democracy must "present situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living together, and where observation and information are calculated to develop social insight and interest."
• School democracy must "provide pupils with structured opportunities to explore actively aspects, issues and events through school and community involvement, case studies and critical discussions that are challenging and relevant to their lives."

Learning outcome assessment

• The school must assess the acquired competencies of the pupils.
• The school must have a formulated collection of responses to underperforming pupils and unchallenged pupils, including ability grouping, tracking, counseling and individual education.

Pupil motivation

• The school must assess the motivation of individual pupils.
• The school must have a formulated collection of responses to low motivation.

Individual education

• The school must assist underperforming pupils and unchallenged pupils.
• The school must offer individual education to all pupils and must invite all pupils to participate in individual education programs.
• Individual education programs must assess the interests of pupils and must be prepared to stimulate new interests.
• The school should make an effort to allow a degree of interest-driven learning for all pupils. Disinterested pupils should preferably not attend courses intended primarily for interest-driven learning in order to preserve the positive learning experience for the other pupils.

Assistant teacher progress

• Assistant teachers must be allowed to qualify as teachers starting no later than during grade nine.
• Assistant teachers must have at least one further mandatory educator qualification to aim for after becoming assistant teachers (e.g. tutor).
• There must be a sufficient element of self-determination in the design of the assistant teacher effort of the school or the efforts of each grade or class.

Citizenship education

• Assistant teachers must receive citizenship education as part of the assistant teacher effort and must be invited and motivated to see the assistant teacher effort as a moral obligation and responsibility.

Parent education

• The school must offer parent education and must motivate parents to participate.
• Pupils must develop their own parent education course during the grades seven to ten.

Adult education

• The school must make offers for lifelong learning.
• Especially the school must make an attempt to retrain and to guide the requalification of unemployed parents whose children attend the school.
• It is recommended that parents are contractually obligated to attend the school as requested by the school as soon as school fees are reduced because of unemployment.
• It is recommended that sufficiently qualified high school pupils are used as tutors and mentors in the training process.

Mentoring

• The school must offer at least a voluntary cross-age peer mentoring program. The recommendation is to make mentoring a mandatory part of the assistant teacher effort.
• College preparatory schools must offer cross-age peer mentoring programs with mandatory participation for pupils in college preparatory high school tracks as program mentors.

Individual study

• College preparatory schools must make an effort to motivate individual study and independent learning. Vocational schools should at least aim to motivate individual study and independent learning.
• College preparatory schools must provide a learning resource centre, school library media center or similar facility.
• Assistant teachers must be invited to prepare learning material for lessons themselves and with an appropriate degree of independence.