Educating Africa
Millennium Goals for Africa
• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development
Challenges for education
• Acute teacher shortage (between 2 and 4 million additional teachers needed to achieve UPE by 2015)
• But attractiveness of teaching career is declining, making recruitment and retention increasingly difficult
• HIV, AIDS and other diseases have had a dramatic impact on teacher supply
• Widespread use of untrained teachers, increasing and becoming more persistent
• Where teachers are trained, programmes often inadequate preparation for reality of schools; inappropriate structures and curriculum, poor quality trainers, lack of basic resources and materials
• Lack of coherent policies for professional training and development
• Insufficient standardization of accreditation
• Weak links between pre-service and in-service training
• Lack of career paths and succession planning
In rural areas…..
• Schooling is an interrupted process• ‘Readiness to learn’ is reduced by non-school
factors• Poor quality teaching/few materials/no
resources• Perceived curriculum relevance low• Not an immediate priority for governments
What is a good rural school?
• Community view
• Teachers view
• System view
Community perspective
• Access and safety
• School/community relations
• Curriculum that connects with local cultural and religious beliefs
• A resource to the community
• Accountable to the community
Teacher perspective
• Examination results
• Pay and conditions
• Class size
• Student attendance and behaviour
• Support and recognition
• Progression/promotion
• Management not corrupt
System perspective
• Examination results
• Follows set curriculum
• Care of resources and school environment
• Extra-curricular activities
• Working relationships
• Community support
Priorities for action
• Teacher performance and development- including position of women teachers
• Fit-for-purpose information systems and information management
• Local knowledge of school improvement strategies and approaches
• Curriculum reform: reflect local needs and opportunities
• Links with health services and programmes
• Effective support- from system
from community
from parents
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