A fair chance - United Nations Girls' Education Initiative

women; legal rights counseling; HIV prevention,etc.).Finally, we propose that the 2003 Week of Action inMali takes on the critical focus of Equity inEducation, and Reform of Education meansCommunity Reform highlighting gender concerns.We propose promoting, through a series of visibleactions, the formula: Access to Education = Equity =Quality Education.We recommend that the Week of Action in Maliimplements the Urgent Actions outlined in theLobbying Strategic Action Plan submitted toOGB/Mali by a commission of educationorganisations (February 2003).Those Urgent Actions are:● the identification of approximately 1,000 girls whopassed entrance exams into high school last year,but this year were not admitted due to their age(19 and older), and determination of continuedschooling/training options for them;● analysis of types and conditions of financial andtechnical support to Mali’s education reform beingoffered by international aid organisations;● draft legislation for the Girls’ Education Actguaranteeing legal protection;●●●●review CPS statistics and analyse gender disaggregateddata for inconsistencies and lacks;continuing education of classroom teachers totrain them to use gender-equitable practices,national language instruction and active methodsin their classrooms;revisions to Pedagogie Convergente materials topromote conscientious gender equity themes(prior to wider distribution to meet demand forthese materials as more and more first gradeclassrooms are transformed to PC);outreach to teacher training institutions (thosetraining primary and secondary school teachers)for integration of gender equity into new teachertraining curriculums;– solicit letters of intent for these institutions tolook at the problem;– draft short-term action plans to define how theywill look at the problem;– mobilise education expertise to meet with theseinstitutions to determine what work needs to becommissioned in order to make changes totheir teacher training curriculum.61