Action
Through its Education and Child Development Programme, UNICEF cooperates with the Ministry of Education to provide technical support for educational development in 12 provinces of Western China. UNICEF helps develop models that demonstrate how education quality can be raised for specific target populations. It also supports policy decisions aimed at expanding those models for more widespread use. Currently, UNICEF is piloting models in the following areas: Life skills training. Through a strategy of peer education, this approach demonstrates the benefits of empowering out-of-school adolescent children with critical skills related to leadership, decision-making, protection against AIDS, and drug abuse, adolescent health care and prevention, and knowledge of children's and women's rights. Adolescents also learn life skills, especially adolescents left behind in the growing migration from rural to urban areas.
School development planning focuses on improving the professional capacity of head teachers. It has contributed to strengthening school-community partnerships, mobilizing resources for new school infrastructure, and providing scholarships for girls and minority children. Teacher Training. A combination of participatory and distance learning methods in teacher training has popularized the child-friendly model in a way that complements the principles of suzhi jiaoyu (quality-oriented education) espoused by the Government of China. Local specific curricular guidelines have been created by provincial authorities in the areas of textbook development and teacher training. UNICEF has also supported the development of subject-specific videotapes and VCDs and trained key teachers in pilot counties. These tapes and training are also available in the ethnic minority languages of Kazak and Tibetan. Teaching Aids and Sports Equipment. UNICEF's School-in-a-Box programme provides teaching aids to schools and trains teachers in the use of this material. UNICEF also supplies computers and sports equipment to its pilot schools.
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