Novel teaching scheme to be introduced

Ethiopia is to launch a satellite teaching scheme targeting every school in the country, the ministry of education announced on Tuesday. It plans to beam thousands of programmes on subjects such as English, maths and science into every high school as part of a teaching aid for pupils. The high-tech scheme will target the country’s 580 schools, and includes vocational and technical colleges as well as teacher training centres. “We are going to beam these education programmes into every school in Ethiopia,” said Dermissew Bekele, general manager of education and media at the ministry. “We have to give education to students wherever they are. We must provide education to anyone, anywhere, at any time,” he told IRIN. The multi-million dollar scheme, funded by various donors and the government, is expected to be launched early next year. Dermissew said the programmes – about 15,000 in total covering six subjects and technical training – will all be broadcast in English. He added that the programmes could help build up the capacity of teachers and ensure uniformity of lessons countrywide. The ministry is currently looking for producers abroad to supply them with the curriculum to make the programmes. It is also looking to improve Internet access for schools so that children can access information on the web. “One of the major problems we are facing in our country is that pupils are deprived of information, deprived of knowledge,” Dermissew said. Ethiopia has one of the poorest education records in the world. Almost half the children do not go to school and attendance by girls is one of the lowest in the world.