Afghan refugee children to benefit from new guide

A training manual and guide on improving the performance of teachers working with Afghan refugee children in Pakistan was launched on Thursday. "There have been great changes in education over the years in relation to equal participation, provision of facilities for girls, and environmental changes, to name but a few. These are just a few issues that need to be taken on board by the teachers," Dr S.B. Ekanayake, the author of the book, who is a technical adviser to the German Agency for Technical Cooperation(GTZ), told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Funded by GTZ, the book, entitled "Mega Trends and Challenges in Refugee Education", examines the changes affecting education over the last decade, and the special needs of Afghan refugees, particularly those from conflict situations. "An efficient teacher can motivate the children and bring about positive changes in their behaviour," he observed. With some 10 years of experience of working with refugees, Ekanayake wrote the manual after engaging in lengthy discussions with Afghan refugees to establish their educational needs. The fact that there are about 170,000 Afghan refugee pupils in almost 500 schools with 5,000 teachers in Pakistan today, highlights the need to ensure that teaching methods are effective. However, only three to four percent of these children make it beyond six years of basic schooling to secondary and further levels of education. It is estimated that less than 30 percent of the pupils are girls. The book is already in circulation and being utilised by trainers under the GTZ's education programme for Afghan refugees, the largest of its kind in the world, covering as it does 120,000 children in the North West Frontier Province. "I have trained 20 master trainers, who will then train about 70 field supervisors, and this will continue to have a cascade effect," Ekanayake said. The book was launched by the United Nations Educational Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) in order to promote its application by other NGOs working in the field of education for refugees. "UNESCO sees the publication of this book as important in relation to its work in teacher training for Afghan refugee teachers. The ultimate outcome of better teachers, school managers, planners, parents and teachers' associations, and more donor attention, is better education for the children," said Ingeborg Breines, the UNESCO country representative in Pakistan. The book will also be translated into Pashtu and Dari, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan, so that it can be used to train teachers there. "A change in methods of teaching is what the refugee children need in order to be taught properly and have a better future," Ekanayake stressed.