Teachers' Unions finally wake up against Corporal Punishments, as another cause of drop out in schools….

Charlotte.Bazira@actionaid.org

Since May this year, one of the four teachers' Unions in Burundi organized a nationwide sensitization against Violence in school as it has been revealed that it is a major cause for concern and forces many children to attend irregularly or to drop out: The session took data from ILOP participatory research as a reference and the focus was on child’s right protection in schools.   TUs, parents and Ministry education representatives participated.  School based committees of children and teachers had been put in place to regularly ensure their colleagues’ rights are protected including disabled, orphans and positive HIV who were neglected. These committees meet regularly and meet with the General assembly quarterly with a summary assessment of the child’s right protection situation in their schools. In the Burundi East region, this committee is very active and the impact is being exported to other regions. Note that these structures still need support to be strengthened and to make the largest possible impact. “This project is like a light for our school. Since these kind of meetings had been started by PTAs members, the percentage of drop out rate is going down and down,….I also have some students who joined and now  became advocates of child rights here…” a Head teacher said during a sensitization session at Karusi.

 As well as the sensitization session, the local committee that is in place, in partnership with SLEB and ActionAid, organized an intensive awareness campaign in the 4 regions during the whole year period to ensure all teachers and parents are aware of what child protection means in a classroom setting. The four media stations contributed very much with spot radio and TV, sketches, broadcasting and the local based associations contributed with traditional theatre. Information leaflets on child protection policy and equal treatment of all children in schools had been distributed through schools.

A second round of the campaign worked with media stations in the four regions to cascade the messages around child protection and child rights to a local level.  Information leaflets on child protection policy have continued to be distributed through schools. At local level, school based committees have been set up to promote child protection and monitor the wellbeing of vulnerable children.  Committees are made up of teachers, students and parents who meet regularly to assess the child protection situation in that school.   These committees have been set up in 92 schools and it is hoped this scheme can be rolled out further in the future.

WEST AFRICA- READY FOR ADVOCACY IN EDUCATION FINANCING

Dorothy.Konadu@actionaid.org

As part of efforts to build the capacity of Civil Societies working in education to campaign effectively for adequate resources to ensure quality education delivery ActionAid International in collaboration with Education International has produced a toolkit for campaigning on education financing. Subsequently, it has become necessary to ensure effective utilisation of this toolkit and to achieve this effectively the target group has been carefully divided into units to be trained. The training for Anglophone West Africa was held in Banjul, The Gambia from September 27 to October 1, 2010 with representatives from Teachers’ Unions, National Coalitions on Education and ActionAid from Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone as participants. The Gambia being the host country had a total of fifteen representatives.

The objectives were to:

·         build the capacity of participants to understand key issues relating to education financing in their country

·         develop a national campaign on education financing, tailored to the national context that builds on existing initiatives

·         align the national campaign on education financing with the specific opportunities and demands of other campaign opportunities in 2010

·         enable participants to leave with the confidence and clarity to run efficiently their own national workshops

To achieve these, the workshop introduced the participants to the key principles to follow in building an evidence-based campaign buttressed by international requirements and identified common regional groups to collaborate with. It also helped identify targets for advocacy both in-country and as a sub-region and provided a lot of practical examples of issues that need to be tackled in education financing advocacy. 

As practical as it was, it drew on examples from participating countries to explain how suggestions provided in the toolkit could be adapted. Thus, for instance, there were discussions on the various country-budget cycles with emphasis on the need for gender budgeting as well as the power dynamics in setting the budget for education. This enabled participants to identify players involved and establish the level of ‘power’ each wields in determining what is finally approved as the budget for education. This was to help participants know who to target on what issue. Other areas of focus included key teacher issues that need to be considered during budgeting and these were identified mainly as funds for training and professional development, remuneration and accommodation.

Officials from various government offices such as the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Tax revenue office generously gave presentations on the Gambian example to facilitate the discussions. There was also an introduction to Macro-economics and education presented by an in-country World Bank official. This brought pages 80 to 83 of the toolkit on those to see when collecting relevant macro-economic data and conducting interviews to life and generated a very lively discussion leading to major lessons.

By the end of the workshop, each country group had, from the series of group work, developed a plan to start an evidence-based national education financing campaign

As a way-forward, ANCEFA encouraged represented organisations to build on campaign plan from the workshop for implementation and make budgets available to carry the plan drawn at the workshop through at the national level. It is anticipated that CSEF will fund national workshops on education financing as well as research to buttress campaigns. It is also expected that participating countries will apply knowledge and experience gained to achieved improvement in actual finances for education in their various countries

GIVING THE GIRLS A VOICE!!!! ….. BRING ABOUT INCREASE IN BUDGET!!! Azuka.Menkiti@actionaid.org

At the heart of programming and intervention design for the Enhancing Girls Basic Education in Northern Nigeria project (EGBENN) are the unreached rural girls of Northern Nigeria who are unable  to challenge and effectively fight the forces of their oppression, discrimination and unequal treatment. The girl child in Northern Nigeria is glaringly a double­ disadvantaged individual given her sex and age. She is brought up in structures, systems, values, attitudes and practices that create circumstances which violate her right to access education.

The socio-cultural context of her existence not only encourages social exclusion and gender discrimination, but in addition, brings to bare the effects of instutionalised patriarchal practices hidden under the culture and religion to perpetuate injustice and unfair distribution of opportunities, hindering the development of education policies capable of guaranteeing her right to education. The girls  grow up with complex of attitudes inculcated in them very early in life. Most often by the time they reach teenage age, socialization processes put them in their place as inferior to boys which they simply accept.  According to   ten year old Dayyaba Ibrahim, “We are inferior to the boys.  I am not allowed to say my mind.’

Through the EGBENN project, ActionAid Nigeria formed and established girls clubs in the 36  Project Communities targeted at building self-confidence in the in-school girls to be able to speak out and  advocate for change within their communities. Capacity building activities were organized for these girls including public speaking skills, exposure visits, use of participatory tools, interactive meetings with policy and law makers, debating and quiz competitions, one on one interaction with female role models among others.  The girls meet once a week to discuss issues concerning them in the school and map out strategies for mobilization of their peers who are missing education.

The clubs created space and opportunities for the girls to express themselves. It built the confidence of the in -school girls who are already enrolled to remain and complete their education. It creates in the girls a high sense of rights consciousness to be able to resist attempts to withdraw them from school. Through the use of participatory tools such as community  household maps, social maps the girls are able to identify their out of school peers, within their communities and identified strategies through which such peers could be attracted to enroll in school. Exposure visits were also organized for the girls and some campaign materials such as Hijabs, school bags and vests produced and given them to motivate them to remain in school and encourage others to enroll. Within the clubs, the capacities of the girls were built to review their school environments and determine their child friendliness, identifying the gaps and solutions. 

Key Outcomes

•         Girls who were forcefully withdrawn from school and given away in marriage were empowered to report their parents to the Local Education Secretary who took the parents to court and got the girls back to school. The parents were made to sign undertakings that such girls would be allowed to remain and complete basic education.

•         Increased budgetary allocation to girls’ education by the Zamfara State house of Assembly as result of the interactive meetings between the legislators and the girl clubs.

•         Girls are able to articulate their issues and present same to duty bearers.

The visit to the   state Parliament   provided the girls opportunity of interacting with the key officers. During these meetings the girls present the issues that came out of their School mapping such as lack of separate toilets for girls, Absence of Female teachers, Lack of girl -sensitive recreational facilities in schools, dilapidated school buildings and absence of instructional materials. One of such interactions, Sadatu Mailafiya who spoke on behalf of the girls requested the Speaker of the state Parliament to “ use his authority to ensure that these facilities are provided so that when we tell our friends who are not in school to join us they will happily come.” 

Honorable Speaker, Alhaji Abdullahi Sambo assured the girls of the commitment of the Legislature to ensure that the girls enjoy their rights to education “We in the State house of Assembly will work hard to make sure that all you have requested of us are provided for in the next budget. We will work with the Executive to provide the schools with the entire infrastructure that will school worthy going. I encourage you who are in school to ensure that that nothing takes you out of school. We will ensure that additional 500million naira is added to the state budget to take care of these concerns you have raised”

GIRLS’ CONFERENCE INSPIRES GIRLS TO WORK HARD AT SCHOOL by Julie.Juma@actionaid.org

Girls from the five districts in which ActionAid International Malawi works in the Southern Region participated in a two day girls’ conference in Blantyre from 15^th -17^th October 2010.  There were 51 girls from primary schools and two from secondary schools. These were from Nsanje, Phalombe, Neno, Chiradzulu and Machinga.The purpose of the conference was to encourage the girls to stay in school and aim at attaining the highest levels of education. In Malawi the dropout rate is high with girls having only a 27% completion rate.

The girls were therefore given talks on leadership, assertiveness, self esteem, hygiene, HIV and AIDS and violence against girls. They were also exposed to role models; women of different professions. They were also taken on exposure visits to the Blantyre Print, Malawi Institute of Journalism (MIJ) and Radio station and Southern Bottlers Malawi Ltd where they witnessed how beverages are made. At all these places they met with female managers who encouraged them to work hard and explained how they themselves worked hard at school to get to where they are today, the obstacles they met and how they overcame them.

The theme of the conference was ‘change begins with me’. The girls agreed at the end of the conference that for them to progress in life they need to change their attitude towards education, believe in themselves and influence others to see girls’ education in a different light.

The girls were very inspired by the visits and the talks given to them by the women.  One of the girls Tadala Gama from Phalombe Primary school said that she was very inspired by the young journalists that she met at MIJ and that she will work extra hard at school to achieve her ambition of becoming  a nurse. To her she has seen for herself that women can also be managers in organizations therefore she will share what she has leant at this conference with her friends in Phalombe and inspire them to work hard and be achievers like the role models that they were exposed to.

These girls will be followed up for the next five years to see how they are progressing in their education and what the impact of their having participated in the conference has been. A national conference has been planned to take place in December during the school holidays and some of these girls will also participate in that conference.