Preface

The objective of this essay is to convince teachers in developing countries to use multigrade teaching as as a good alternative for their actual classroom practice.

Since 25 years I was working as a teacher in a multigrade classroom, I had the privilege to enrich this experience in different areas, such as. Likasi, Bwamanda, Bujumbura, Paris and Lusaka and very soon in PhnomPenh.

This essay presents my experience in Zambia,where I worked as an education advisor.

During the first six months of my stay in Zambia, I travelled a lot in the country to get a picture of the organization of the in-service training. My first question involved the teachers. What is their educational background and what are their experiences as teachers? The next questions involved the situation of the in-service programme in Zambia ? The most important question was, how can we improve the quality of education? Teacher training through practice must have an impact on the performance of the teachers, what is the best strategy ? The search for the answers to these questions, brought me to the design of a strategy based on decentralization and participation of local communities.

This paper shows that through decentralization and participation of local communities the quality of multigrade education can be improved.