Request for Proposal (RFP)-For: Consultant or consultants or consultancy agency to design needs analysis plan and tools, M&E plan and tools for the ‘BMTTI: Developing capacity of English language teacher educators and teachers in Madrasahs’ project

Tender description

2.1 Purpose of the project<br />This proposal summarises potential project objectives, outcomes and activities that could be built into a two-year capacity building programme for teacher educators of Bangladesh Madrasah Teachers’ Training Institute (BMTTI) and teachers of English in Madrassahs across the country. This document will provide the basis for a formal agreement between the BMTTI and British Council Bangladesh.<br /><br />2.2 Background<br />2.1 The Madrasah system is the second biggest education stream in Bangladesh. It is governed by the Directorate of Madrasah Education (DME), which sits within the Technical and Madrasah Education Division (TMED) of the Ministry of Education (MoE) of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB).<br />There are more than 13000 institutions under DME at primary (Ebtidayee), secondary (Dakhil), higher secondary (Alim), and tertiary (Fazil and Kamil) levels, and almost 450 thousand students in pre-primary to grade 5 (49% girls) as well as almost 2.7 million students in post-primary (54% girls) . In addition to the national curriculum, the Madrasah system includes a range of subjects related to Islamic religious studies. There are approximately 130,000 teachers. More than 18000 (30% female)1 are in Ebtidayee Madrasahs (pre-primary to grade 5), and 1,12000 in post-primary (19% female)2.<br />Bangladesh Madrasah Teacher Training Institute (BMTTI) is the sole training institution under DME and is responsible for the professional development of all 130,000 teachers. BMTTI runs an in-service training programme that provides a one-month intensive subject-based training, including English, for the different levels and an online 72-hour English language course to improve English language proficiency of teachers who teach English in the different levels. The subject-based and English language courses are delivered by two English specialist members of BMTTI faculty and a pool of around 20 freelance trainers. Currently BMTTI delivers the subject-based training to 800 teachers (pre-primary to tertiary) and the online English language course to 500 teachers every year. <br />While at the moment Madrasah teachers are receiving training on the new national curriculum along with teachers in the Secondary and Higher Education Division (SHED) of MoE, they are not normally covered by the in-service training and CPD scheme of SHED, Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) and their network of Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs). This puts Madrasah teachers at a significant disadvantage in terms of opportunities for professional development activities and creates significant strain on BMTTI who are left with the formidable challenge of training 130,000 teachers . Only 25% of current teachers have received any training by BMTTI, which means that BMTTI will not be able to increase this coverage to 100% by 2030 at the current rate of training delivery .<br />In addition to the inadequate capacity to deliver training on a large scale, BMTTI faces a number of other challenges including lack of professional development opportunities for the faculty members and trainers, lack of up to date and effective training courses and materials, and teachers’ who are not motivated to seek any professional development opportunities.4 The current state of training and professional development activities contradicts the need for better teacher training and improved English language teaching skills in the Madrasah sector. <br />This project aims to address these challenges by supporting BMTTI, enhancing capacity and effectiveness of their training team, updating training courses, and providing professional development opportunities at scale directly to the teachers.<br />