Results of the pre-school exam show that 82 percent of all the pre-school students graduate and go to Grade 1 in the government school.
Feedback from government schools indicates that students from the Pashai MLE programme often rank first in their class. They are confident in interacting with other students, eager to respond to their teacher’ s questions and are not afraid to stand in front of a classroom full of students. This is especially impressive because Pashai pre-school classes have twenty students and G1 classes in government schools have up to 100 students.
Parents see the difference between their children who were in the Pashai classes and those who were not. The younger siblings who attend the pre-school course are able to help their older siblings who are enrolled in non-MLE government schools. Parents often comment on another important characteristic of their children who are in the programme: they love to study and are eager to go to the after school study course. They are enthusiastic and confident in the classroom, whereas other children are often shy and not willing to go to school.
Recently, many people from the community were present at a graduation party to mark the end of the pre-school programme. After the students had demonstrated what they had learned, the Education Director of Dara-i-Noor district stated that the difference between pre-school students and students in the regular government school students is so big that it’ s even difficult to compare them with each other.
MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
What are your plans for the future?
Until recently, the MTB BE programme focused on the South East Pashai who live mostly in the Dara-i-Noor area. Recently, the programme team took part in conducting surveys in the parts of Afghanistan where people speak the other three varieties of Pashai. Hopefully, when the survey results are analyzed, they will identify communities and locations that are ready for their own MTB BE programmes.
However, if MTB BE is to expand beyond the Pashai community it needs to be integrated into the national education system. The Government of Afghanistan is aware of the need for MTB BE and the outlook is good that it will happen. In 2014 the Ministry of Education developed an“ Inclusive and Child Friendly Education Policy” that includes a section on children’ s right to education in their mother tongue. The policy states that curricula, examinations and assessment systems will be developed in ethnic minority languages through Grade 3, and that teachers will be trained in using their language as the language of instruction.
Based on their experience in implementing this pilot project, Pashai team leaders have learned several important lessons relating to expansion. First is that MTB BE programmes should be appropriate to the places where they are implemented. This means that classroom activities and materials should reflect the students’ culture as well as their language. Also, the implementation plan should be realistic with respect to the geographic, economic and political situation in the community.
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