A major milestone was achieved in May when EI affiliates from Eastern and Southern Africa concluded their proposals to take the EFAIDS Programme one step forward. From May 8-10 national coordinators of the EFAIDS Programme, General Secretaries and other union staff from six African unions met in Nairobi with EI staff and a representative of our partner organisation the EDC (Education Development Center) to finalise their action plans with regard to advocating for EFA and fighting HIV and AIDS for the coming year.

These unions were the ETA (Ethiopian Teachers’ Association), KNUT (Kenya National Union of Teachers), TUM (Teachers’ Union of Malawi) TTU (Tanzania Teachers’ Union), UNATU (Uganda National Teachers’ Union), and ZIMTA (Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association).

Later that same week, their counterparts from six Southern African unions met in Johannesburg with the same goal in mind. These were the BTU (Botswana Teachers Union), LAT (Lesotho Association of Teachers), NANTU (Namibia National Teachers’ Union), SNAT (Swaziland National Association of Teachers), SADTU (South African Democratic Teachers’ Union) and ZNUT (Zambia National Union of Teachers).

As a result our colleagues are soon to start implementing important activities within the framework of the EFAIDS Programme. For more information, contact us.

In countries where Education for All is still a distant dream, the role of teachers in fighting phenomena such as pupil dropout is all the more crucial.

With this in mind, a booklet on dropout was produced in March by the Akhila Karnataka Prathamika Shikshakara Sangha (AKPSS), an organisation of primary school teachers in Karnataka, which is affiliated to EI member All-India Primary Teachers' Federation (AIPTF).

The publication entitled ‘Golden Dawn: Drop Out Children’ states that fifty eight years after independence, India is still ‘groping in darkness, still a large section being illiterate, children in their teens dropping out of schools to labour in fields, factories and mines.’ Golden Dawn therefore represents a new age and an opportunity to work towards social justice, equality and in particular to care for the right of the child to education.

In line with such thinking, this teachers’ organisation, with the support of AIPTF/EI and the FNV (Federation of Dutch Trade Unions) has been working on the ‘EFA Karnataka Project’ since 2003. A full review of the project is featured in the booklet, as well as information on dropout and child labour in India. For more information, please contact us.

In January KNUT (Kenya National Union of Teachers) published its new HIV & AIDS Education Workplace Policy, a compact and information-rich booklet which should be used as a source of inspiration for other unions. In the publication, KNUT notes that "The threat to the education sector arises from the diminishing supply of experienced teachers due to deaths from AIDS-related diseases. Many children drop out of school mainly because families are unable to pay school fees. On the other hand, children drop out to care for and support family members".

To this end by devising this policy and recognising HIV & AIDS as a workplace issue, KNUT seeks to “address the problems and challenges posed by HIV & AIDS, not only to teachers, but also to the entire education sector in Kenya”. More specifically it will be working towards training teachers on HIV & AIDS, identifying Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) and organising appropriate intervention, establishing supporting programmes for members and lobbying for their rights. For more information or to request a booklet, please contact us.

In Bolivia, the Confederation of Urban Education Workers of Bolivia (CTEUB) is working on a project entitled ‘Education for All – six thematic areas for curricular content’ which will soon be getting off the ground.

The project aims to reinforce the achievements already made by the previous CTEUB initiative ‘La escuela para rescatar la patria’ or ‘Schools rejuvenating the country’ which focused on the importance of intercultural exchanges in education.

One of the most important activities within the project is the organisation of a special Education Congress which will bring together 500 delegates from the different provincial and regional federations around the country. They will concentrate on developing the themes and will present the proposal for the curriculum to be discussed in the National Education Congress. For more information, please contact us.

In the April edition of its magazine the Teacher’s Monitor, ZNUT (Zambia National Union of Teachers) General Secretary Roy Mwaba expresses his disappointment on the 2006 budget presented to the Zambian Parliament in February of this year. Mr. Mwaba highlights the problems faced by teachers in Zambia, including desperately high pupil teacher ratios (which in rural regions surpass 115:1), high attrition rates (with some 3,500 teachers leaving the sector each year) and inadequate recruitment by the government. Consequently there is a teacher shortage of about 12,000.

Against this backdrop the government’s target to employ another 4,578 teachers this year will barely cover those leaving the profession. As General Secretary Mwaba points out "Quality education can only be realised if Government ensures an adequate supply of qualified teachers in all schools." To achieve this, ZNUT calls on the Government to allocate 5% of GDP to education. “Without this commitment all efforts will be in vain”. For more information, please contact us.

In 2001 the UN General Assembly adopted a special document outlining a plan of action to combat HIV and AIDS in the coming decade (UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS).

In this, governments and international agencies pledged to allocate more funds and reduce the expansion of the pandemic. From May 29 - June 1 2006 the UN convened a meeting to review the progress that has been made since 2001. This meeting was a momentous occasion for one specific reason: for the first time in history the UN invited civil society organisations to come and express their positions on the progress made – or not made - to fight HIV and AIDS. To find out about EI’s role in the meeting and the discussions on education and HIV/AIDS please click here.

The record of national governments across the world in providing proper training on HIV/AIDS for teachers is an altogether mixed one. However in the majority of African countries national administrations have failed to mount a long-term and systematic education sector response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In 2005 EI sent a survey to all unions involved in the ‘HIV/AIDS Prevention through Schools Programme’ to gather information on the positioning of HIV and AIDS within pre- and in-service training. Their responses are now contained in the EI Report ‘Training For Life: Teacher Training on HIV/AIDS’.

The document is essentially an analysis of the performance of Ministries of Education in eight countries on a crucial element in the fight against HIV: making sure that teachers have the knowledge and the skills to address HIV in their schools. The feedback from affiliates largely confirms EI’s concerns regarding training i.e. that it is limited or non-existent. To download a copy of the report, please click here.

According to the ILO an astounding one in seven children worldwide is involved in child labour of some kind. This represents a serious challenge to achieving the goal of Education for All (EFA) by 2015. In recognition of the fact that to move forward on EFA, advances must also be made in eliminating child labour, EI has recently stepped up its efforts in this area.

On May 15-16, a workshop on developing strategies to combat child labour was organised by the ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) and WCL (World Confederation of Labour) in Brussels. EI as well as other unions and NGOs active in the field of child labour participated in the workshop, which set out to bring together civil society organisations to exchange views, experiences and to plan activities on child labour. The workshop was also an excellent opportunity for EI to re-orient its child labour related work and to have fruitful discussions with other participants such as ILO/IPEC. At the meeting the important role of teachers in the fight against child labour was emphasised, as well as the link between child labour and Education For All. For more information please contact us.

Education International and ActionAid International (AAI) share a deep passion for securing quality basic education for all. On this basis, representatives of EI and AAI from across India, Nepal, Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Brazil met in April to discuss policies in seven key areas. These include amongst others education and HIV/AIDS, privatisation and public education and non-professional teachers.

On this last issue, a significant change in AAI policies was noted. AAI now supports the EI position that para- or non-professional teachers should not be recruited as this represents a violation of the right of the child to quality education. The spread of non-professional teachers is happening at an alarming rate, promoted by the World Bank and backed up by distorted research.

Employing non-professionals is being seen as a low cost and permanent solution – yet this is having a devastating impact on quality and equity in education. EI and AAI also recommended that national teacher unions should actively encourage existing non-professional teachers to become members and that existing non-professional teachers should be integrated into the professional workforce by gaining access to quality training. For more information, please contact us.

“ I am promoting the ‘MINIMAX’ approach. This means that we have to make all conceivable efforts to MINIMIZE the impact of the AIDS epidemic on education and to MAXIMIZE the impact of education on the epidemic. Education is integral to overcoming HIV and AIDS. An Africa free of the epidemic will not come into being without the full involvement of education and the education system. Any weakening of the education system is by that very fact a weakening of a key institution in society’s struggle against HIV and AIDS.”

“ AIDS in the curricula is needed but that as such is not enough. There is little concern with the purpose and the rationale of a school curriculum. We must think much more radically about what education and schooling should look like in a world of AIDS. ”

“ We need a school that is a centre for real and meaningful learning. We must build schools where children want to be, a school as a place which enables the child to grow and where it enjoys learning. The school is often the only community centre and we must turn these schools into multi-purpose centres. In the ideal situation we would see teachers that are well respected. Teachers are the unsung heroes of our times who succeed in very unfavourable circumstances in enabling young people bring some of their innate abilities to the surface and in equipping them with the basic tools of a modern education.”