BY MENGESHA AMARE
Cognizant of the fact that investing in posterity is building the future of the nation, the Ministry of Education is relentlessly endeavoring to ensure quality education. True, quality education and well confidential way of examining students helps the nation produce competent, productive, responsible, civic minded and innovator generation. That is why the country has started capitalizing on a range of viable ways in schools, colleges and universities as well.
Education Minister Prof. Berhanu Nega said, “The way we have been following right now would unequivocally help the nation bring about the desired change with regard to the education sector especially focusing on quality.”
According to him, the country hasn’t so far well focused on quality though changes have been recorded concerning education accessibility. Hence, to well bridge the gap witnessed with regard to quality, the combined effort of all is badly required.
Ethiopia has well comprehended that achieving quality education is one of the most powerful and proven vehicles for sustainable economic, social, cultural and political developments. Besides, the country has embarked on ensuring quality education as it is a viable for progress and attaining multiple goals.
As to Prof. Berhanu, students were sent to higher learning institutions to take university entrance exam and scrupulously invigilated there, and it would be crucial for having productive generation.
“The Ministry is working to come up with competent citizens as schools and grades are key elements of education. That is why it has been investing time and resources to educate the next generation who will take over the country with its future. This move also needs some standards that can be used to measure how effective education is,” he added.
This year’s means of testing students at universities would help them, be they are from social science stream or from that of natural science or from private schools or public ones, gain the skills and capacities as well as knowledge to succeed in fostering their academic life devoid of cheating and other irregularities.
Really, the Ethiopian government is now working more on education as it expands access to quality education though a lot remains to be done. In spite of widespread access to education throughout the nation, a range of challenges have remained intact with regard to quality of education.
It is also undeniable fact that Ethiopia has left with a long journey to do away with schools over crowdedness; teacher’s limited training, low learning outcomes to prettily swap the trajectory of the education industry. It is quite decisive to well comprehend that population growth in Ethiopia and the influx of refugees has placed additional pressure on the country’s public education system, and students fall out of the system would lack opportunities to get back on track.
He said, “Ethiopia has recently experienced massive improvement in access to education despite weaknesses in terms of ensuring quality. Taking this fact into account, the Ministry is now extraordinarily investing in quality.”
Prof, Berhanu further elucidated that Ethiopia has been capitalizing on quality in all education levels centering secondary school streams and higher education departments, including, technical, engineering and scientific programs, vocational training and information and communications technology so as to enlist itself in the category of middle income countries within the shortest time possible, and be competent with other developed nations of the globe, in the future.
Prof. also said, “Students who have been passing through quality academic cannel are going to combat corruption and any form of malpractice. Besides, they would be of significantly useful in coming up with problem solving ideas and contributing to the comprehensive development of the nation instead of fattening their private pocket and quenching self-interest.”
True, when these citizens come to power, they would be great weapons for the county to contain anti-peace move, terrorism, inefficient government undertakings as well as threat of illiteracy and poverty. Yes, this threat is less evident in affluent and fairly well-organized societies. The new generation at schools has to have idea free of partiality, and should not be dominated by others’ ideology.
Abera Tadeg is an education expert working for quality assessment. He said that without doubt education has been laying a solid foundation for healthy human development as it is strongly correlated with various social and economic benefits. Hence, all actors running the sector, concerned educational institutions, policymakers, and teachers, even the entire community, have to focus on quality improvements to make a difference in the sector.
He further stated that the government has trekked a long journey and continue doing so in order to create a more conducive learning environment. This is really a promising move.
This impressive move requires the combined effort of all since making a difference through quality education should not be left solely to the Ministry and others working in the area, Abera opined.
Every generation’s complaining about the succeeding or descending generational flow leads nowhere. What matters is consolidating the positive aspects and lucrative trajectory and doing away with the negative repercussions of any act in the world of education.
These days, it is repeatedly heralded that the education policy in Ethiopia has to incorporate indigenous knowledge and wisdom from the school system to help the nation have confident and determined citizens to serve the country and its people. Such a local capacity helps students or trainees have courage to easily assimilate themselves with modern education and global literacy arena.
The present step of the ministry targets at two fundamental thematic areas namely, to excellently avoid the culture of cheating among students and help them acculturated themselves with the next level of academic success knowing at what level they are, i.e capable ones can easily penetrate the cliff and those who didn’t study would critically look into themselves.
As to Abera, obviously, quality education enables students to do what they want and society’s demands for conformity to their own necessities, which people become engineers, scientists, lawyers, teachers, journalists, soldiers, or specialists of some kind. This is the world of students in which they would be change engines and have become a part of intellectual club through quality education.
It is well recognized that education has both global and local aspects and it should be framed with indigenous knowledge as local context matters the most. If the country intends for its new generation of students to develop problem-solving skills, it has to well embark on the generation to be critical thinkers, innovators, and those who can be models for their juniors, Abera underlined.
Basically, he said, acquiring knowledge and skills needed to promote personal development, social-wellbeing as well as national progress, among others, through education—especially via quality one—is instrumental in coming up with sustainable lifestyles, ensure human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and improving working culture.
In sum, to ensure quality education the country should train teachers well thereby making them competent, and recruit them from the very beginning breaking the old trend of assigning students who score lower grades in their secondary school or first year of their university stay to the teaching stream. For runners of the education sector— educators or teachers— have to be free from political affiliation as the sector itself requires citizens working for producing productive and innovative fellow citizens who have developed sense of belongingness, patriotism, spirit of fraternity, amicable approach and harmonious way of living.
Besides, providing students with good teaching and learning process and examining them in a very orderly manner would help ensure quality education and this in turn can be regarded as a viable step for ensuring quality education. In simple terms, investing in posterity is building the future of the nation.
The Ethiopian Herald November 5/2022
