educating africa

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