Ethiopian Primary School

Today I had the pleasure of visiting one of Ethiopia’s large public primary schools and it’s first teacher training college. Well, to be honest I started this piece some weeks ago now. During that time I have not visited any other school or college, but can claim to have gained many insights into the educational system in Ethiopia.

The school, on the periphery of Addis, is touted as the largest primary school in Africa. The facility is certainly not large. The enrolment though is well in excess of 5,000 during the day with another 3,000 attending in the evening. Yes, this is a primary school – grades 1 thru 8. Average class size is in excess of sixty students. Classrooms range from a relatively new four-story facility to dilapidated cinder block buildings, the exterior walls of which are decorated with geometric formula, such as the volume of a cone and the periodic table!

This particular school serves as a resource center for a school cluster. The limited teaching aids, library, arts and science facilities are located at a central school to maximize their availability to other schools in the cluster. We are not talking about masses of sophisticated laboratory equipment or art room setup here. Many families in the US with a couple of teenagers have probably acquired and stored in the attic or garage the kind of material in this resource center. Even so the existence and amount of material was obviously a point of pride for the individual responsible for maintaining the center. Unfortunately too much of the material remained in the center, with little evidence of it being actively used in the classrooms.

The classrooms fit the standard image associated with developing country educational systems; small rooms crammed with benches and small tables, children sitting shoulder to shoulder, a worn-out blackboard, broken windows and dark blank walls – the colorful maps in the resource center are too valuable to hang here! But then, when a source of income for the school is to be had from harvesting, by hand, foot-high grass to be sold in the local market, it puts a different perspective on the value of wall maps etc. That said the children remain extremely well behaved and apparently eager to learn – imagine a class of sixty 7-8 year olds remaining in their seats, OK making some noise but not outrageously loud, whilst the teacher is off who knew where. Enter Vern.

Vern is a retired University Dean from Australia, currently working in Mizan western Ethiopia (unless you have a really good map don’t bother looking for it). Mizan is home to one of the new universities. It has been open for two years, none of the buildings are complete, the library roof leaks (although this is not the disaster one might imagine as it only has 105 books) (I trust Vern’s counting). Back to the school. Vern couldn’t resist walking into the classroom, raising a finger to his lips in the international sign to be quiet. At this point the whole class sat obediently quiet followed by five minutes of teacher-pupil exchanges in third grade English. Magic. Then it was onto the teacher training college.

The techniques displayed at the teacher training college were interesting, in a positive way, and held particular significance for the other twenty or so education volunteers in the party - this trip being organized as part of the in-country training for the new batch of volunteers. VSO has been operating in the Teacher Education Institutes assisting in establishing a Higher Diploma Program aimed at improving the approaches to teaching both used by, and taught by the teacher educators. Here everyone that stands (or sits) at the front of a classroom/lecture hall is termed a “teacher”. Many of the techniques we take for granted however require resources that are not readily available, posing additional problems to their adoption. For example, when a classroom is filled to overflowing on tightly packed benches there is little space to organize group activities. Nonetheless the young instructors and teachers demonstrated a level of dedication, imagination and flexibility that can only be admired.

There is much more, but that is for another day.