Today, UNESCO is releasing the new gender summary portion of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report at UN Headquarters in New York City. The report covers progress that countries have made towards the global education goals agreed upon in 2000, and why education must remain at the heart of the global development agenda.
A serious gender imbalance in global education has left over 100 million young women in low and lower middle income countries unable to read a single sentence, and will prevent half of the 31 million girls out of school from ever enrolling. These are among the main findings of the Gender Summary, which calls for equity to be at the forefront of new global development goals so that every child has an equal chance of learning through quality education.
Included among the many topics covered in the report is a review of the Planet Aid-sponsored teacher training program in Malawi. The report underscores the success of the pre-service program at the four colleges where it is being implemented, particularly with respect to recruitment and training of female teachers.
"The programme has been particularly beneficial in encouraging young women to train as rural teachers. Of the female students in the programme, 80% found that school practice topics prepared them adequately for teaching in rural areas, compared with 38% of female students in government colleges. Furthermore, 87% of female students in the programme said they would opt for a rural post, compared with 67% of those in government colleges." — EFA Global Monitoring Report
The report also states that 72% of the teacher trainees identified student teaching in the classroom as the component that helped them most. Moreover, the report indicated that 80% of the trainees gained experience in how to provide remedial support to students, compared with just 14% in government colleges. This additional experience was deemed crucial and a key advantage of the approach. The report concluded that: "Given the large numbers of rural children needing such support, government colleges need to learn from the programme to ensure that all trainee teachers acquire the skills to teach in areas where they are most needed."
To read the full 2013-14 report visit the UNESCO site. The Malawi program review appears on page 241 of the report (see image below). Read more about the Planet Aids-sponsored teacher training program in Malawi by clicking here.
