Plenty of fun keeps everyone’s attention. |
Two
hundred schools in deprived hamlets of Upper Egypt are sending ripples through the
country’s education system, making girls and women the beacons of a new learning
experience.
When in 1992, community
schools came to the ezbah–hamlets along the Nile that are islands amidst an arid
desert landscape–they started from scratch, in places with no basic services. While
some districts are notorious for their seclusion of girls and women, the overriding
obstacle to schooling was distance and economic duress. “We wish all girls, women
and men of the village would get an education,” said an elderly man from Helba, a
hamlet in the governate of Assiut, “but we cannot afford it, nor can we allow our
girls to go to far places on their own.”
In most rural areas of the south, girls’ net enrolment rates range from 50 to 70
percent, compared with 90 percent nationally. In the most extreme cases, only 12
girls are enrolled for every 100 boys. Although the government tried to reach these
groups in the 1970s through small multigrade schools, population growth, combined
with economic strife and teachers’ low qualifications, led to high absentee rates,
and the initiative gradually disappeared.
From the outset, we were in this endeavour with communities and the Ministry of Education.
Communities donate space, ensure that children come to class and manage the schools
through an education committee in each hamlet. The Ministry pays facilitators and
provides textbooks while Unicef is responsible for the overall development of the
programme.
Lifting the economic barriers was a first step: rooted in communities, the schools
are close to the home. Timetables are flexible and all hidden costs are knocked out,
from uniforms to schoolbags. But the other pivotal dimension is quality. Parents
take it for granted that their sons will go to school. This is not the case with
girls: you have to prove the experience is worth it.
Tapping
creative talents
Our model relies on active learning. After intensive training, young facilitators–women
chosen from the area with an intermediate school certificate–know how to transform
the contents of the government curriculum into activities, such as cards, games,
etc. They enhance it with subjects suited to local interest, such as health, environment,
agriculture and local history, and encourage self-directed activities, learning by
doing and in small groups.
A plethora of hand-made curricula has flourished over the years, which were on loan
to the curriculum development centre for a year. The centre invited the facilitators
to help produce learning guides in math and Arabic for grades one to three, which
will be distributed to some 3,500 multigrade classroom schools in rural areas. These
have been launched by the government, on the basis of the community school model.
Now we are designing teacher training in tandem with government and implementing
it ourselves: in short, we are training a whole new corps of inspectors, supervisors,
headmasters and teachers in this new “active learning” pedagogy. We are gradually
negotiating with regular schools to assess children’s achievement other than through
regular exams.
If we are making headway, it is also because we have been fortunate to benefit from
highly committed policymakers. From the outset, the initiative has not been regarded
as a project, but as a contribution to national educational reform. Since 1995, an
Education Innovations Committee has been systematically working to incorporate new
pedagogies in mainstream schools. Beyond reaching the hard to reach, namely girls,
this model is showing the way to changing the classroom experience for all.
Since the programme was launched, we have reached some 6,000 children, and female
enrolment stands at 70 percent. The real barrier lies in girls continuing their education,
even though evaluations show that our graduates pass government exams with flying
colours. The first lady, a longtime defender of education, has given prizes to community
school graduates, to the tune of nationwide media coverage. Within communities, the
schools are catalysts for more profound changes: we are seeing facilitators publicly
declare they will only marry a man who lets them continue teaching, and 12-year-olds
convincing their parents to postpone marriage until they graduate. Slowly, girls
are gaining a voice in areas far from the city walls. |
