BY SOLOMON WASSIHUN
Education is the most powerful tool of change and equity for society providing opportunities to people for a better life. It is the bedrock on which all other socio-economic developments are built. It is a force of social justice that narrows the gap between the rich and poor. Education arms us with the skill and knowledge to exploit our talents, understand our natural and social environment as well as build a personality agreeable with civilized moral and ethical values.
“Education is what makes us who we are. Depending on its quality and objectives, it can kill or heal a generation. I was born to a poor family but still worked my way out of poverty to achieve a comfortable middle-class life. I could not imagine what would become of me and what my life would have been like, had I not gone to school. A well-educated generation can be a moneymaker as well as a peacemaker. Give the youth poor education, then what you get would be trouble makers instead of troubleshooters” said one election candidate in a recent public debate last week
Education as a tool has to be equitably accessible to all citizens without any bias or discrimination. Ensuring accessibility of quality education to all citizens is certainly a means of materialization of sustainable social justice, which in turn lead to the dwindling of such social crises like poverty, crimes, conflicts, emigration, and so on.
It has been over a century since the nation embarked on adopting a modern education system. Reports have it that the nation has changed its school curricula five times. The current curricula which were introduced by the defunct EPRDF regime have stayed for over two decades. Despite its success in realizing a dramatic increase in education accessibility to citizens, the implementation of these curricula has been receiving sharp criticism from experts, especially in terms of quality, being accessible to girls and those with special needs as well as equitable distribution of schools educational faculties across the nation.
Since the advent of the reformist administration three years ago, encouraging and promising results have been registered to address the problems surrounding the education system in carefully organized and well-researched step-wise measures. The incumbent government has realized from the start that education is one of the sectors that are severely impacted by the ill-advised policies and misguided strategies of the EPRDF regime. It also clearly stressed that the education sector which directly affects the lives of millions of citizens is a highly prioritized key development agenda that determine the future of the country.
Based on the assessment studies conducted, the education authorities have identified the major problems of the sector which include among others quality, equitable provision, and accessibility. Following the identification of the problems, a road map for providing step-wise remedies has been formulated and put into action. The road map is based on the notion of improving and building on the experiences and achievements made in the previous regime, rather than demolishing everything and starting from scratch.
Within the last two years, several practical and fundamental reform measures have already been introduced in the sector. First and foremost the revision of general school curricula is being undertaken. The curricula structure known as the “8-2-2” system that has been in place for well over two decades under the 1994 education policy has been changed to the “6-2-4” system. The self-contained system of teaching for pupils between grades one and four has been terminated. The government has mobilized a huge amount of funds in partnership and the private sector to finance the makeover of tent schools in remote areas into well-structured and furnished ones. School feeding programs are being conducted sustainably in all major cities and efforts are being made to extend the coverage of the program
First-year freshman courses have been reintroduced in higher education systems. Public universities have been categorized into five groups based on their resources, present status, and future potential to specialize in certain areas and provide quality education up to post-graduate levels. The differentiation of public universities is expected to address the excessive homogeneity of public universities in their structure, focus, and study programs. Thus it would create a more responsive and competitive system promoting practical researches that make tangible outcomes in improving the lives of communities as well as train competent professional workforce in high demand on the job market.
The lead actors in the education system, teachers, have been given due attention in the road map’s action plan. Various schemes are being introduced to promote conducive working environment for teachers as well as to introduce incentives to make the teachers well compensated for their hard and highly crucial works – producing knowledgeable responsible and ethical generations of the future. The revamping works on the procedures of recruitment and training of teachers both from home and abroad is another area of focus of the road map.
The reform in the education system strives also in modernizing the teaching-learning process in keeping with the advancing digital technology. The application of ICT in teaching, evaluation, inspection, and administration works in the education system is widening and making positive impacts and opening up new possibilities. The government is spending a huge amount of funds to further strengthen the ICT infrastructures in the education system.
With regards to adult education, the Education Ministry has implemented a procedure by which adults could be evaluated and certified for literacy in basic writing, reading, and arithmetic skills. The certificates would enable the adults either to continue their education or help them to land better-paying jobs.
Indigenous knowledge is a national resource that received, until now, little attention from educators, researchers, and policymakers. One thing that sets apart the current ongoing reform in the education system from the ones made in the previous times is that it is not just adopted from the experience of other countries with a successful education system. The reform considers indigenous knowledge as an input in the formulation of the new education system.
The nation is known to be a treasure trove of unique indigenous knowledge in various fields of expertise including among others, medicine, architecture, astronomy handicraft, agriculture, natural resource management, philosophy, governance, conflict resolution, and so on. Encouraging works are being done to identify, record, scientifically explain, validate as well as apply and preserve for use by generations through education.
The Amhara State officials have recently announced that they are implementing a project enabling elementary and secondary schools to start teaching the Geez Language, the ancient Ethiopian language in which most of the records of the nations’ indigenous knowledge are written. The objective of the project is to make way for the proliferation of Geez experts that will be digging into the forgotten and obscured ‘caves’ of indigenous knowledge of the country. “This is a resurrection for Geez, and the resurrection of Geez means the resurrection of the country’s indigenous knowledge”, commented an expert. With the conviction that homegrown solutions, we are searching for today’s problems lay in the endogenous knowledge of our forbearers, some universities have gone as far as establishing Indigenous Knowledge Centers. Similar centers are expected to be opened in other universities too.
In the coming years, the reform in the education system is expected to focus on science and engineering education to support the country’s development strategy that stresses the need to boost and diversify industrial production. Special schooling and evaluation system for child-prodigies [children with outstanding talents and abilities] is expected to be introduced. The leadership and management positions of educational institutions at all levels would soon be entirely occupied by well-qualified and competent professionals.
All in all, it is obvious that education has been the priority sector for the reformist government. In the only three years of the reform period, the change that has been implemented in the sector is relatively quite vast and deep. If this wind of change continues with this momentum through the decade ahead, surely the national education system would achieve the quality, the equity, the coverage it aims to achieve enabling citizens to be beneficiaries of the opportunities education could provide to change their life for the better, and thus build a society where social justice prevails.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD JULY 1/2021
