CHANCE for Change: Community Development Projects

Teacher Training Programme

Background

Out of every 1000 children born in Nepal each year, on average 700 enter school in class One. This 70% falls to only 7% completing class 10, and 1.4% pass the School Leaving Certificate (SLC).

Although an encouraging number of children are starting school, few of them manage to complete their studies. There are numerous reasons for this:

• Pressure from home to help on the farm or work to earn a contribution to keep the family supported
• Cost of uniforms and books get higher as the children progress – this may affect the parental support
• Fewer junior / senior schools and so travel time increases
• Upon reaching puberty – girls are often literally teased out of school

In Addition the education system in Nepal has had little if no attention paid to the quality of teaching. The SLC does not provide any preparation for “life” with practical skills or , but is merely a test of rote-memory. To witness the teaching methodologies is an eye opening experience with children not learning how to apply a skill or how to calculate an answer but merely learning the answer by heart. The classroom is therefore more of a military environment and thus children drop out and work at home rather than complete their years.

We are therefore very keen to ensure “Quality” is achieved by any development project in Nepal. We shall be concentrating our and community project efforts on introducing improved teaching methodologies.
We have therefore teamed up with other Charity / NGOs, the Department of Education & the Teaching Union of Nepal to develop a teacher Training Programme.

The programme will be a “road-show” type approach with travelling trainers to visit local districts and deliver training and provide equipment for schools to then adopt and continue with the new skills. The programme will start with a small geographical area as a pilot and then roll out nationally if successful.

So far we have:

• Training Materials completed
• Training Staff coached and ready to start

We hope to start the training during the school holidays this year – which commence in November.

Project Objectives

• Provide Teacher Training to existing and new teachers to improve the quality of education provided in Nepali Schools
• To ensure that the new methodologies are adopted across entire schools and supported by Head Teachers
• To do this in a manner which develops the national infrastructure in the public sector rather than establishing or supporting private institutions
• To be geographically diverse with regard to the provision of resources across the country
• Not to create a dependency culture and therefore ensure full community and, or government integration with any project.
• To ensure the project is sustainable and can be maintained and operated on an ongoing basis at a local level.

Stage 1) Provision of Teacher Training “Road-Show Style” - Pilot

A specific district region will be selected as a test for the training programme to commence a pilot. We shall start with primary sector teachers to generate strong foundations from which to build secondary sector training.

• Gain local agreement to train all teachers in a school at the same time on the school premises (up to 1 month trainings during school holidays in winter)
• Provide materials and equipments required in order to utilize newly trained skills
• Follow up with Renewal courses for teachers to have a “Refresher”
• Set up contracts with teachers to ensure they remain in the community schools for a period of time after the training is provided.
  

Stage 2) Train the trainer programme – National coverage

If successful then we shall adapt and implement a train the trainer programme so that more road shows can be operating at any one time. Using DoE facilities run trainer programmes to increase the number of trainers to disperse out into the field. This will then allow an expansion of operations and make the project more sustainable if we are not reliant upon a few qualified members.

Stage 3) Full integration and Teacher Training Qualifications

Our Vision is to be able to integrate this training into the government run organisations and develop links with colleges and University t have a formal Teacher Training Certificate qualification.

For the immediate future we wish to raise enough funding to provide the training described above and help provide a Quality education that retains the children in school to complete their School Leaving Certificate. If we can make a difference to the cheerless statistics at the beginning of this report, we shall help to improve the future for the next generation of Nepali Children.

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THANK YOU for taking the time to read this and for your support for CHANCE’s Community Projects.