NRC’s Alternative Basic Education (ABE) programme provides a second chance for children left out of the formal school system in Somaliland .
By: Andre Celeti/NRC
Somalilandsun – This year´s Global Campaign for education calls for «Trained Teachers for All». There are about 61 million children without access to primary education alone. To reach these children, there is an estimated need of 1,7 million more teachers.
The campaign aims at upholding every child’s right to quality education by focusing on the enormous needs there are for teachers around the world, and on how to tackle these. Not only is there a numeric shortage, but many children that do have access to schools don’t have access to learning because of the low quality of teachers. This overall situation has created a teacher gap that hinders the achievement of Education for All goals.
Therefore, the goal of the campaign is to promote the increase of trained teachers, leading to quality education for all. To achieve such ends it highlights in particular the importance on targeting strategic areas such as policy on financing, teacher management and teacher training. It also pinpoints, amongst other things, the importance of ensuring gender parity within the teacher profession as to enhance gender equity within schooling.
NRC in Somaliland: Closing the teacher gap
In Somaliland, where only 28% of primary teachers are qualified to teach, NRC has supported non-formal and untrained formal education teachers with in-service training to enhance their learner friendly pedagogical skills and by providing school based mentoring and coaching activities. Teachers who succeeded in the programme obtained formal qualification as teachers leading to the project’s significant contribution to increasing the teaching force under the Ministry of Education in Somaliland. In 2013, 172 untrained teachers from three regions of Somaliland will undergo the formal teacher qualification training, funded by the European Commission.
Aiming at increasing the portion of qualified female teachers the project has also worked with pre-service training through the enrollment of secondary school graduates into Universities and Teacher Training Institutions for two year certified teacher training programmes. In June 2013, under the above mentioned EU funded project, 30 female secondary graduates will be enrolled in Hargeisa University under the pre-service programme.
The project has also strengthened the capacity of the Ministry of Education in Somaliland in diverse ways such as developing a unified Teacher Education Curriculum, a National Teacher Education Policy and a Teacher’s Code of Conduct that has been approved and translated into Somali Language.
