EI and Oxfam Novib’s Quality Educators for All Project has been selected as one of the three winners of the 2014 UNESCO-Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize for Outstanding Practice and Performance in Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teachers.
The prize will be presented on 7 October 2014 at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, as part of the 20th anniversary celebration of World Teachers' Day.
The UNESCO-Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize, set up in 2009, aims to support, encourage, and benefit those working to enhance the performance and effectiveness of teachers towards the achievement of Education for All.
The Quality Educators for All project was recognised for its contribution to the training and professional development of teachers through the use of a competence-based approach. The programme, which was established in 2007, launched successful pilots in Mali and Uganda.
The project brings together government representatives, teachers’ unions, civil society, and academics to develop a competence profile for primary school teachers. That profile is then used to inform, reform, and execute teacher training and professional development programmes. In Mali, the project is building a bridge between formal and non-formal education, while working with community schools, training teachers, and lobbying the government to accept these schools into the public system.
Success in pilot countries
Teacher competence profiles, training and curricular materials developed during the project were adopted as official government documents in both Mali and Uganda. In addition, the programme has provided in-service training and professional development to 3,570 community school head teachers and teachers in Mali and 2,508 teachers and head teachers in Uganda, 39 per cent of whom were women. Positive results and testimonials regarding the success of the project have been received from teachers, education authorities and students.
EI: Profiles key to quality education
“The Quality Educators for All project has empowered classroom teachers and school leaders in Mali and Uganda and helped us to come up with teacher competence profiles that can be used to improve the quality of teachers, teaching, and learning,” said EI General Secretary, Fred van Leeuwen. “We will work tirelessly to consolidate the achievements we have made so far and to step up our advocacy so that every child is taught by a qualified, motivated, and well-supported teacher,” he stressed.
EI and Oxfam Novib plan to consolidate the programme in the two pilot countries and to expand it to cover other countries.
To find out more about the UNESCO-Hamdan Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize, please follow the links below:
http://www.teachersforefa.unesco.org/v2/index.php/en/newss/item/351
To find more information about the Quality Educators for All project, please visit:
http://www.ei-ie.org/en/websections/content_detail/6212
http://www.oxfamnovib.nl/Quality-teaching-benefits-generations-to-come.html