ABSTRACT
Those persons who manage and staff schools, language centres and other units (referred to in this chapter as language centres) that deliver second language instruction need reliable feedback on their teaching and management activities. With reliable information, programme personnel are able to assess their progress, and adjust their plans and activities to improve performance. Acting on reliable feedback, a language centre can ensure quality service to its students and also demonstrate its efforts towards mission achievement to those authorities to whom it is accountable.
This chapter briefly discusses the benefits to be gained by language centres through die use of participatory evaluation, referred to here as Programme-Based Review (PBR). It illustrates the use of PBR with reference to a specific British Council-sponsored project in Indonesia. The example illustrates how evaluation criteria were arrived at and how a single language centre, belonging to Lemigas, the Indonesian Government gas research and distribution enterprise, undertook an evaluation with the purpose of improving the quality of specific aspects of its performance, in particular those relating to programme delivery, institutional relations and internal organisation, and internal finance.
