The government of Ethiopia has been recently looking to improve their education system by visiting several countries worldwide, so as to learn from the best practices which prevail in the sector worldwide. In an aim to work towards this goal, a delegation from the Ethiopian Government’s Ministry of Education is visiting Indian currently. Best practices including teacher training, mid-day meal schemes as well as instruction in mother tongue are among the key focus of the ministry’s visit in India.
On Tuesday, the delegation had also gone on to participate in a selective and controlled media talk. The Chief of the Party Dr. Jordene Hale was the one to lead the discussion and was joined by Ato Tayachew Ayalew who is Director of Mother Tongue and English Language Education Development in the country of Ethiopia as well as Birhanu Moreda, who’s role is Advisor to State Minister of General Education for the Government of Ethiopia.
The Delegation
The group was accompanied by none other than Himanshu Sikka, who is Chief Strategy and Diversification Officer of IPE Global Ltd. As well as Shalender Sharma, the Vice-President of Education and Skill Development at IPE Global Limited. The delegation was extremely keen to pick up the real behind the scenes challenges of running education at such a grand scale in a country like India with such a large population of students as well as children who don’t have traditional educational opportunities as is the case in their home country.
The delegation, that was led by Dr. Hale, went on to interact with several officials of the Indian Government who are a part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (or SSA), The National Council of Education Research and Training (or NCERT), Mid-Day Meal Scheme, along with the illustrious recipients of the famous Gandhi Fellowship which recognizes contributions in the field of education.
The members who escorted the delegation namely Sikka and Sharma represented IPE Global, which is a consulting group for international development who have had many projects in the field of education worldwide. They were in fact the masterminds behind the organization of this seminal visit as well as the stakeholder engagements which were held for the delegates.
Having the second largest youth population in Africa, and also a fast growing one, Ethiopia is tasked with a huge challenge in terms of developing an appropriate education system for the nation. The government of the country clearly takes this task quite seriously as they are making realistic visits to countries that have been faced with similar challenges and are currently ahead of the curve, and while India has an education system which is far from perfect and requires much improvement, there are still several best practices from which the government of Ethiopia may learn.
In Ethiopia, it is estimated that about 3 million children in the primary school age group as well as more than twenty million youth are not currently within the formal education system in the country. It is these worrying set of figures that has driven the government to look at the educational system with a watchful eye as to where it may be improved. Of the children who are out of school a vast majority are those who have had no formal education at all, and this has shown dearly in the unemployment rate.