UNICEF reaches children in the remotest parts of Timor-Leste through its School Readiness Programme
UNICEF and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport help children prepare for school
A UNICEF vehicle winds its way along dry riverbeds, roads that hug the steep sides of mountains and through patches of jungle in Ermera municipality, Timor-Leste, toward the EBF Hatulailete school. In some sections, the road is so narrow, an encounter with a motorcycle or the occasional horse and buffalo requires deft driving skills and someone getting off the vehicle to direct the driver away from the edge of a steep cliff. Public transport is non-existent.
Inside the vehicle are three UNICEF staff members who are supporting the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to reach remote schools and help prepare children for primary school and learning under the UNICEF-supported School Readiness Programme.
“The travel to these remote schools is not just hair-raising, it shows how far schools can be from communities and the long distances some children have to travel on a daily basis just to get the education they deserve,” says Jieun Jung, UNICEF’s Early Childhood Development Officer. “It also makes it challenging for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to conduct monitoring or provide regular support.”
After arriving at the school, UNICEF’s Education team conducts a day-long training session for eight students from grade 4 and 5, who in turn will continue to conduct peer-to-peer engagement with Grade 1 students on the skills and knowledge they need for learning. The main activity of the programme is a child-to-child peer mentoring activity, in which students read to, play with, and support the learning of children in Grade 1, with guidance from teachers.
To date, over 1,836 students in grade 1 and 594 students from grade 4 -5 in 41 schools have benefitted from the school readiness programme.
The UNICEF team also provided a refresher training for teachers on how to actively engage with students and help them learn.
Refresher trainings like this one, under the School Readiness Programme, are presently being carried out at 11 basic education schools in Ermera and Liquica municipalities. Initial trainings were conducted for 210 peer mentors and 86 teachers in 2019. COVID-19 related restrictions and school closures interrupted the roll out of the trainings and regular implementation in 2020 and 2021.
“With this training, we are helping children who are not able to access pre-schools get the necessary skills and tools they need to learn, progress, and remain in school,” says Bilal Durrani, UNICEF’s Country Representative in Timor-Leste.
The School Coordinator in Hatulailete, Nicolao Gouveia Leite, expressed great appreciation for the training. “Here, it is very far from Gleno (the capital of the Ermera district), and during the rainy season the road becomes very dangerous. Sometimes, teachers go to Gleno to get some training, but UNICEF staff are the first visitors to deliver in-person training since the COVID-19 outbreak.”
The School Readiness Programme has been implemented in Timor-Leste since 2019, and is currently being implemented in Ainaro, Dili, Ermera, Liquica municipalities and the Special Administrative Region of Oecusse. It is supported by UNICEF’s National Committee in Australia, with funding from individual donors as well as the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).
