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A workshop to launch the ‘Every Child Needs a Teacher’ programme was held on 30 October in Ségou, Mali. The workshop was part of the “Quality Educators for All” project, supported by EI.

The ‘Quality Educators for All in Mali’ programme began in 2010 in the Kayes, Koulikoro and Sikasso region. The programme is achieving very encouraging results for the improvement of quality education in Mali.

It is the outcome of a partnership between the Ministry of Education, Literacy and the Promotion of the National Languages, the Syndicat National de l’Education et de la Culture(SNEC), which is the EI’s national affiliate, and the Education for All National Coalition.

Ownership of programme

This ‘Every Child Needs a Teacher’ programme, supported financially and technically by Comic Relief, Oxfam Novib and EI, will cover the Ségou region. It will focus on training teachers in the community schools.

The aim of the workshop, chaired by the Governor of the Ségou region, was for the civil society organisations and technical and financial partners to take ownership of the activities of the “Every Child Needs a Teacher” programme in the Ségou region.

More specifically, it was about allowing these organisations to familiarise themselves with the programme’s activities and implementation strategies, gathering the opinions and suggestions of the participants with a view to improving the process, gaining a clear understanding of the role of each actor in the implementation of the programme, and securing the commitment of the regional authorities and other actors to guarantee the achievement of the programme’s objectives.

Train 3,000 teachers

The Associate Director of Oxfam Novib, Moussa Faye, explained that for Oxfam Novib and the technical and financial partners, the programme would contribute to training 3,000 teachers in the community schools as well as trainee teachers in the Teacher Training Institutes in the Ségou region.

EI’s Regional Coordinator, Samuel Ngoua Ngou, who attended the workshop, said: “EI is delighted that, here in Ségou, all the relevant actors from the Malian state, the development partners and EI’s affiliate, the Syndicat national de l’éducation et de la culture(SNEC), have joined hearts and minds so that, together, we can launch the programme, ‘Every Child Needs a Qualified Teacher’.”

“We are here so that the girls and boys of Ségou can have qualified teachers. We are here to participate in the building of a society and a republic that can offer a fair deal to all of their children by giving them access to quality education, without which their chances of personal fulfilment and their participation in the development of society will be greatly weakened.”

Promote children’s rights

Underlining the leading role played by education unions in society, he said that education unions do so much more than organise strikes or demand rights and advantages for their category or sector. They also defend and promote the equal rights of the children they are responsible for and their families.

“We are here to celebrate the fact that Mali has joined those who refuse to sow the seeds of an educational and cultural divide that is harmful on every level, a divide that some Africans defend and promote, through selfishness or naivety, outdated theories that tend to confuse investment in education, which protects against the most serious crises of the future and mobilises the positive creativity of the human spirit, with financial or commercial investment,” Ngoua Ngou said.

He noted that schools, notably state schools, are also the place where, regardless of class or gender, the essential skills are acquired to allow the human spirit to build defences against fanaticism, fundamentalism, intolerance and arrogance, accepted only in ignorance.

Provide quality education

Educational policies advocated by international experts, including those of the World Bank or the IMF, had failed, he said. “For the sake of our youth and our own dignity, let us stand together, let us be pro-active, rigorous and creative just like those nations who have been able to overcome endemic poverty despite a hostile environment and economic climate. Let us use the full strength of our imagination and our creative genius to give our schools the permanent means to provide quality education.”

“We can no longer aim solely for progress in access. Quality for the benefit of all must be foremost in the minds of all those responsible for providing it,” he urged.

The report of the workshop is available here(in French).

Click here to read Samuel Ngoua Ngou’s full speech (in French).

To find out more about the “Quality Educators for All” project, click here