Community needs assessment questions
The school management committee should engage with a broad range of stakeholders to find out what issues are
important to cover in a needs assessment. While each context is unique, needs assessments may include questions
such as:
• Are existing school buildings vulnerable to hazards?
• Have existing buildings been damaged by disaster?
• Do students have trouble accessing education because of distance or dangers they face while commuting to school?
• What grades would a new school serve?
• Does the school building need to serve multiple functions, such as a shelter during hazards or a community gathering
point?
• Can the school rectify existing educational inequality by enhancing access for girls, minorities, disabled children or others?
• Due to remoteness or cultural custom, does the building need to include teacher housing or other auxiliary features like
large meeting halls, gymnasiums or kitchens?
• What innovations or community aspirations does the community want the school to include? For example, should the
school include gardens, rainwater harvesting, electricity generation or specific cultural elements?
• What will make a positive learning environment?
SECTION III: PLANNING
By assessing need, the school management committee
can develop criteria to guide the Planning and Design
Stages. Program managers and the committee can
also identify local resource persons and external
experts who can advise the committee on strategies for
addressing identified needs through the constructi on
process.
IN CONTEXT
The importance of
a needs assessment
In response to a request from one Maasai community
leader, a new NGO built a small school in the rural
Massai Mara in Kenya. The school was high quality,
but they built with limited presence on-site and limited
dialogue with other stakeholders. Unknown to the NGO,
a government-built and staffed public school was just
one kilometre away with almost no-one living between.
In the remote DRC Plateau region, building safer
schools starts with a community consultation to identify
location requirements (distance from surrounding
villages, known hazards, security, location of raw
materials, etc). This engages the community from
the outset and is also an opportunity for women and
children to be included in discussions and decisions.
Photo: Amy Parker/Children in Crisis.
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In Kenya, public school is technically free, but the
costs of lunch, uniforms and exam fees turn public
education into a financial burden for many. To stem the
strain, the NGO required a flat monthly attendance fee
of US$0.22, which undercuts the price of the nearby
public school. Parents sent students to the new school
in droves. After one year, class sizes ballooned to more
than 60 students, overdrawing school resources and
making the public school redundant.
Although the new school was well-constructed, an
independent comprehensive needs-based assessment
would have created dialogue with the local government
and other stakeholders. With increased coordination,
the NGO may have better served the educational
needs of the community by expanding the existing
school so all students in the area benefited or by
building a new school at another site where children did
not have access to any school.