TEACHERS GLOBAL TRAINING

Strengthen the teachers'capacities through continuous training and promote their access to knowledge through self-learning.

From 1996 to 2001, girls didn't have access to education and women didn't have the right to work in Afghanistan. Following the fall of the Taliban's regime, major improvements were seen in education : the number of pupils in Afghanistan has increased from one million in 2001 - only boys - to 8 million in 2015, 39% of whom are girls. 

However, regarding education, some issues still remain in Afghanistan : the lack of decent school facilities, the insecurity, the insufficient number of teachers and notably female teachers (only 30% of the teachers are women) as well as their lack of qualification (24% have the minimum level of qualification required). Moreover, it is often the high school students who are at greater risks to drop out of the school system and numerous families still refuse to let their daughters attend courses given by male teachers.

To answer these issues: Afghanistan Libre is supporting 7 public schools located in the rural areas of Paghman district and Panjshir provinces. We implement a program called P.A.G.E (Promotion of Afghan Girls Education). Our goal is to provide a high-quality education to more than 8 500 pupils (including 5500 girls) and lead them towards university studies. 

To do so, we put a great emphasis on the teachers training with a focus on female teachers that are often less qualified. Our solution is the Teachers Global Training  composed of a training program led by instructors, and a self-learning program. 

Since 2011, we conduct the teachers’ training project. Every year, 150 teachers (the majority of whom are women) follow several training sessions in mathematics, biology, physics and languages (English as well as Dari/Pashto) provided by highly qualified professors from Kabul.  

Since 2016, we also developped a self-learning program. It is set up in a  room equipped with a television set with DVDs and teaching aids created by the Afghan Ministry of Education. This system allows the teachers to be trained in a continuous way and according to their own rhythm. We chose to have DVDs over online courses because rural schools in Afghanistan have a restricted access to internet. 

In parallel, we also created day nurseries so that female teachers who have children can work.

Our solution is an affordable training that increases the quality of teachers and therefore the quality of education in rural areas. Through the Teachers Global Training, we ensure that educators are well-trained and professionally qualified.

Our solution is part of a long-term vision to create a virtuous circle. By supporting the capacities of teachers (mainly female teachers), we encourage girls to complete their education and become independent. We believe the key to development is to create virtuous circle and practices that will be integrated and implemented later on at a national level.

This solution is totally innovative in the Afghan context, there has been a huge deficiency of the government in the education sector since the 2000s, and our local teachers training solution has been a spearhead to address the matter and inspire more global answers on a national scale. It is using the few technologies available in rural areas in Afghanistan to respond to the tremendous need for teachers training, and is completely adapted to its environment : affordable and very effective.

It is also targeting women, which is a big change in this country, with a global approach (nurseries etc).

Afghanistan has been at war for more than 40 years now. The country is damaged: the living conditions in rural areas are rudimentary with often no access to public electricity and the roads are dangerous, making it difficult to travel. As the country is so damaged, we are using simple yet effective technology such as safe cars (to bring skilled professors from Kabul to train the teachers), instructional DVDs for self-learning and solar panels to compensate the lack of power.

We aim to train more than 200 teachers in scientific subjects including mathematics, physics and chemistry. We emphasize on scientific subjects as they are considered the most essentials in the Afghan educational system.  Since last year, we have implemented new trainings in languages (dari/pashto and english) as requested by the teachers. We plan on continuing to deliver quality trainings and to improve the self-learning system.

We are also implementing a project of digital classes which is now only targeting the students; we are extending it to the teachers so they could have access to internet to complete the self-learning. 

Of course, the main beneficiaries of our solution are the teachers but improving the quality of the teachers directly impacts generations of pupils. The students who receive a better education have greater chances to become the leaders of tomorrow. 

We hope to create a virtuous circle and that our solution of a qualitative training of teachers will be spread across the country. Indeed, we have agreements with the government and use the DVDs of the Afghan Ministry of Education in order to extend our project to a national scale.

Afghanistan Libre is currently supporting  7 schools for a total of 8850 students (including 5500 girls) and 208 teachers (including 143 women). Our solution is deployed within the schools. The training sessions take place in the schools and we implemented a room dedicated to self-learning in each of them. The training sessions usually take place from April to October while the self-learning program lasts during the entire academic year. 

The population who can directly benefit from our solution are the teachers : 143 women and 65 men. Our solution is currently directly affecting them as it is giving them the opportunity to receive a training adapted to their needs. Both the teacher's training and the self-learning are on a voluntary basis, depending of the needs of each one. The quality of their teaching have very much improved thanks to the teacher's global training.

200 beneficiaries are directly affected by our solution. We follow the effects of the global training through a close monitoring. Our Afghan team is regularly doing surprise visits during the teacher's training to check the quality of it and we determine the impact of our solution through pre-test and post test. We can then measure the progression rate which is about 139% between the pre and post-test. 

During the next 3 years, we will prospect to find other schools with a majority of female teachers who need to improve their level, with about the same number of beneficiaries each year. 

The key of the success of Afghanistan Libre's projects is its field team composed of Afghans only. Thanks to them, we have an excellent field experience :  we are able to maintain good relations with the local communities called the Shuras. Our solution is well accepted by the population and is responding to a clearly identify need. 

Since the beginning, we are working hand in hand with the Afghan Ministry of education and we try to instill good pratices. 

We are a non profit development organisation : our goal is not to make profit but to implement projects funded by private foundations, donors, public funds. We hope that in a long-term framework the project will be fully taken over by the Ministry of Education and spread at a national level.

We believe our Teacher's Global Training program is relevant to answer the challenges faced by teachers and educators, especially in underdeveloped rural areas.

 Solve will be a way for us to exchange with people around the world that work with the same goal as us and will enable us to perfect our solution.

One of our key challenge is to overcome the lack of public electricity and the lack of internet coverage, which we need, to be able to develop our solution. We are currently working on it, in a sustainable way (solar panels, green energy facilities). 

Seeing the other solutions proposed by Solve, we can have ideas to overcome these issues. Also we believe it is always good to share with others and have a different perspective through a third party advice.