Issue overview

Issue overview

Unicef in action

Unicef in action

Early Childhood Development

Early Childhood Development

Quality Primary Education

Quality Primary Education

Adolescent Learning

Adolescent Learning

Real lives

Real lives

Contact persons

Contact persons

 

Quality Primary Education

© UNICEF Italy/2003 Di Stefano

Small boy participating in a primary school class in Angola

The Quality Primary Education Project forms the core of the 2005-2008 Education Programme and focuses on the formal primary education system. This project is designed to be a stepping stone to the achievement of Education for All by 2015.

Support is being provided for the establishment of national goals, strategies and programmes, with a view to expanding access to child-friendly, effective and healthy schools. This includes the improved teacher training strategies, mechanisms for supervision, targeted community-involved school construction (including water and sanitation facilities) and standards on hygiene and sanitation for different types of schools, as well as strategies to reach children in isolated areas.

The project also aims to support innovation in primary schools, through the development of teaching and learning materials to implement education reform at the national level, as well as specific support for implementation in targeted municipalities.

Greater community involvement in the development, planning, managing, monitoring and evaluation of education within their communities is promoted, with schools being used as a focal point for change at the community level. The training provided will be focused on participative methodologies to be used in the classroom, as well as gender sensitivity issues and the promotion of girls’ participation.

A nationwide rapid school mapping and data collection exercise is being undertaken as a first step in the development of a comprehensive Education Management Information System (EMIS). The data refers to teaching staff, student enrolment, and school infrastructure.

 

© UNICEF Angola/2003 Pirozzi

Newly recruited and trained Angolan teacher during a lecture in primary school.

Focus on girls

Specific qualitative studies focusing on girls´ education and its characteristics in Angola will be undertaken to complement the collection of gender-disaggregated education data through school mapping and the development of an EMIS. In combination with a national seminar on girls´ education to be held in the second half of the year, support will be provided to the launch of the United Nations Girls´ Education Initiative, UNGEI, in Angola.

UNGEI will result in a girls´ education priority action plan and support will be provided to implement selected priority actions for girls´ education, including the required capacity building of the gender unit and raising gender awareness throughout the education system and society.

Through the Schools for Africa Initiative, and to address one of the most serious constraints to school attendance, new construction is being conducted in approximately 350 locations and 1,150 schools are due to receive rehabilitation of existing structures, such as the installation of windows, roofing and sanitation facilities. Refreshment in-service training is planned to be provided for 78,000 teachers in order to increase the quality of instruction. Attention is also paid to life skills education, including gender sensitivity, hygiene education, prevention of HIV and mine-awareness.

UNICEF is evaluating the possibility to cooperate to develop a proposal for distance education oriented to teachers with less than an eighth grade level of basic education.

Three objectives have been set:

• Strengthened institutional capacity of the Ministry of Education for planning and management of the sector
• Improved quality of primary education through teacher training and provision of teaching and learning materials.
• Increased access to primary education through school construction and rehabilitation, adequate water and sanitation facilities and a national mobilization campaign.

The key activities to be carried out during 2005-08 are as follows:

• Support girls´ education interventions under the framework of a national priority plan for girls´ education and UNGEI.
• Advocate for mainstreaming competency-based learning within national education reform.
• Capacity building for national, provincial and municipal Education Officers
• Support the development of a Teacher Training Masterplan
• In-service teacher training for 78,000 teachers
• Distance education oriented to under-qualified teachers
• Support establishment of standards of educational outcomes and learning achievement testing.
• Design, produce and disseminate teaching packages and teaching and learning materials.
• Training of school directors to encourage teachers to practice effective methods of teaching that are child/girl-friendly.
• Train 1,000 pedagogical supervisors in monitoring the quality of instruction supervisors
• Construct 350 new schools and rehabilitate 1,150 schools including provision of basic school materials and ensuring all targeted schools have access to water and sanitation
• Provide hygiene education and conduct de-worming campaign in all primary schools.
• Undertake social mobilization activities to ensure community ownership of the water supply and sanitation facilities and their active role in the management of the school.