Education

Adolescent Learning

The provision of learning opportunities for excluded adolescents builds on the experience of the UNICEF supported Education for Life and Peace programme as a practical, non-formal approach to life skills development for excluded adolescents.

The project advocates for the development of relevant educational policies for out-of-school youth, and facilitates the design and implementation of a life skills curriculum incorporating literacy, numeracy, citizenship, hygiene promotion, HIV/AIDS prevention, reproductive health and conflict resolution.

The main strategy for implementation will be through partnership with community-based organizations and other partners, such as religious organizations, to ensure adolescents out of school can receive basic pedagogical education as well as life skills information.

These learning spaces may be in local community buildings, such as churches or homes, and the animators are sometimes nominated from the local community with enough educational background to provide at least the early years of education.

An important aspect of the project is to link it to those community-based learning spaces that provide education for adolescents with the formal educational system. In this regard, UNICEF is assisting the Ministry of Education in the design of an accelerated primary education programme for adolescents, including learning materials in line with the national school curriculum.

It is also supporting those adolescents that receive accelerated learning to receive formal certified qualifications. Efforts are also being made to identify and register these and other non-formal learning spaces, in order to further integrate community-based learning with the formal school sector.

Three main objectives have been identified for this project:

• Strengthened institutional capacity of the Ministry of Education and civil society actors to plan, regulate and co-ordinate community-based learning opportunities for adolescents.
• Improved quality of out-of-school learning through support for the training of facilitators, and the provision of learning materials.
• Increased access to out-of-school learning opportunities through expanded community networks, and distance-learning using radio and TV channels.

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

• Support policy development and coordination for adolescent learning in line with EFA goals.
• Support design and expansion of a model for accelerated education for adolescents and promote nation-wide roll-out.
• Provide support to ensure that adolescents who complete accelerated learning courses receive formal certified qualifications.
• Support the incorporation of life skills and HIV/AIDS education in formal education.
• Support locally-based NGOs to implement community-based programs for training animators to provide basic pedagogical education and life skills.
• Provide pedagogical and life-skills education materials to community-based animators.
• Support the development of distance learning opportunities using radio and TV channels to provide facilities and courses for
• Utilise youth radio and printed materials to expand outreach and enhance the youth to youth learning approach

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