EENET asia Newsletters : inaugural issue JUNE 2005 Contents

Child-Friendly Schools with Ethnic Minorities

Marc Wetz

For several years Marc Wetz was responsible for Education in the UNICEF office for Northern Thailand. Since he took over his new position as Country Representative for Enfants et Développement in October 2003 he has implemented the Child-Friendly concept in two projects in remote mountainous ethnic minority areas of Northern Vietnam. In this article he is sharing some important factors that have contributed to the success of the CFS concept in an ethnic minority context.

All schools need to become child friendly - Not only primary schools
I am amazed that many organizations still plan to implement CFS in Primary Schools only. Advantages of applying the CFS concept in pre-, primary as well as secondary schools are evident. Do we want to expose children to harsh critic, even physical abuse in secondary school if they participate in the classroom with an inquiring and pro-active mind as they were taught in Child-Friendly Primary Schools? In that case we better leave them alone instead of confusing children, teachers and community members!
Complement the CFS initiative with a Child Friendly Village/Family initiative
Many reasons why children have difficult access to school and difficulties in continuing to stay in school are to be found in communities. CFS does incite schools to get proactively involved in community initiatives, which is good but let’s be not only child friendly but teacher friendly as well. We should link CFS with a child friendly community/families initiative that could take care of the general improvement of the living standards in the villages as well as help finding solutions for low attendance rates.

Implementation of all CFS components/ dimensions at the same time
In areas with such huge challenges in terms of access and retention, like in most ethnic minority areas, there is often a tendency to only focus on setting up enough and accessible classes and improve the physical environment of schools. However other dimensions, especially the psycho-social environment (e.g. active learning, child centered teaching methodologies and life skills) are as important and should be implemented right from the beginning. All CFS dimensions are inter-related and enhance each other. What is the sense of improving access to schools if once in school the children do not want to stay because they are hit, can not voice their opinions, the curriculum is not adapted to their needs, or it is no fun in school? Great school infrastructure will not achieve the goal of keeping all children in school. Activities in the field of psycho-social environment are important pull factors and if not included into our CFS implementation strategy can become a push factor.

Adaptation of CFS to the local context through identification of unique priorities of each geographic area (external and internal indicators)
Schools are exposed to different social and economic contexts in ethnic minority areas than in the ethnic majority areas. This has to be taken into account by the schools and they must therefore set up their own priorities instead of taking on the priorities of the ethnic majority. This is absolutely essential and if it is done with high participation of children and community members it will significantly contribute to the development of ownership towards CFS initiatives. A method that has proven to be successful is to let stakeholders reflect on external criteria and set up their own internal criteria during CFS consultation meetings. It is very important that the main priorities of children (e.g. ‘teachers should speak slowly and with a pleasant voice’) and community members are respected when the final set of criteria/indicators are established.

Enabling high participation of children and community members
This is not only important for ethnic minority groups, however in those it is crucial due to the fact that ethnic minorities often have low self-esteem, do not understand the national language the teachers speak and might themselves have been in school only for two or three years. They usually feel that they do not have the capacity to get involved in school affairs and that school is an alien place. Even if it is challenging the benefits of including them in all steps of the CFS initiative are immense as they usually respond enthusiastically once true participation and trust has been build. A proven participation process is to include them right from the beginning in CRC sensitizations, visualization of their ‘dream-school’, setting up their own CFS criteria, school self assessment, setting up an yearly school development plan and in the monitoring process of the implementation through appropriate and adapted monitoring tools for children and community members.

Implementing a local curriculum for making education more appropriate to the context and as a first step to let schools become community-friendly
A good way to make school curricula more appropriate to local context is to develop local or indigenous curricula. All ethnic communities have a wealth of local resource persons who could teach/transmit local knowledge in the schools [e.g. livelihood skills like weaving, language, beliefs, history, stories, songs etc.] These local resource persons would need some in-service training and support from the teachers as they do not have necessarily the capacity to teach in school settings. Including local curricula in the CFS initiative is not only beneficial in making education more appropriate to the local context but through bringing community members into schools it helps making the school part of the local community. This process returns self-esteem to ethnic minorities. It proves that not only ‘external knowledge’ is relevant for the life of their children but their own local/indigenous knowledge as well. Reducing the gap between communities and schools is also an excellent basis for adult learning (adults using schools for literacy classes and life-long learning) and make schools not only child and teacher friendly but community friendly as well.

Boarding facilities should not be left as they provide an excellent opportunity for introducing Life Skills Activities
Many ethnic minority areas are not densely populated. We cannot expect that each child will have in the future a lower secondary school at less than 2 hour travelling distance as there will be not enough children to create more schools. Therefore appropriate boarding facilities are a must for each CFS. They need to be healthy, safe and protective (crucial for adolescent girls) and provide an excellent opportunity to conduct extra-curriculum activities like interest clubs with Livelihood and Life Skills Training which can be a good entry point to introduce such activities in the schools

Advocacy for ethnic minority friendly policies
A CFS initiative should include efforts to make government policies more child friendly for ethnic minority groups. For instance a flexible school year should be possible to accommodate harvest time and the cold winter period in order to increase the attendance rate. There is a need for flexible and adapted curriculum as well as for schools proactively including married children.

Marc Wetz is Country Representative for Enfants et Développement (former Save the Children France)
He can be contacted at:
103 Van Phuc Building
No 2 Nui Truc
Kim Ma
Hanoi
Vietnam
Email: mwetz@eedvn.org

EENET asia Newsletters : inaugural issue JUNE 2005 Contents