Education and Training in Ethiopia An Evaluation of Approaching EFA Goals

The projects have kept their budgets and schedules very well. The SSEP project actuallyhad a small surplus in its annual budget, and after the project was over it was found thatthere was a saving of some Ethiopian Birr (ETB) 180,000.As the original plan was to continue development cooperation in quality improvement andin special teacher education after 1998, the GoE applied a bridging phase funding of ETB700,000, to finance special education teacher training. The money was used to train, untilthe end of 2000, special education teachers in the only Ethiopian teacher trainingestablishment, in Sebeta.The special education projects utilized several approaches in training the trainers, teachersand other professionals in order to encourage the Ethiopians to establish their education tothe national universities. The University of Jyväskylä trained the professionals in Finland,and the University of Joensuu also trained them by distance learning method. Theexpenses of the distance education seemed to be only 10 per cent of expenses used for theface-to-face teaching in Finland. One out of six Jyväskylä graduates did not return toEthiopia. The professionals who were trained in Finland got a job after returning home inteacher education, administration, planning etc.Project SustainabilityBefore the project launched in 1994 Finland trained Ethiopian special education experts inFinland, at first teachers and, in the early 1990s, MAs. The emphasis of this assistance inthe provision of special education shifted decisively in 1994, given that the aim of theproject was to create competencies and an infrastructure within Ethiopia itself. TheEthiopian MoE was made responsible for implementing the project.Curriculum developers working in the ICDR under the MoE and in TTIs seemed to beaware that feedback from the field is needed to make possible the continuousimprovement of the syllabuses, and that school-based research will be an essentialcomponent of such feedback. The base line survey of the project is still used as areference.The aim of the special education project has been to help the handicapped to live a goodlife by ensuring that they receive a basic education. The projects have also promoted socialequality within Ethiopian society. Thus far, the educational projects have focused on threecategories of the handicapped: the deaf, the blind and the mentally retarded. The pre-1994projects created an human resources infrastructure when special education specialistswere trained in Finland, but the group included also colleagues from other countries ofAfrica. The starting point of the project launched in 1994 was completely different, beingimplemented in Ethiopia in cooperation with the local stakeholders and having the aim ofstrengthening the national capacity for planning special education, training specialeducators and conducting research on special education.At a moment when a large-scale reform was being launched, many people in the centralgovernment did not consider special education and its target population a primary issuebeside mass education. However, the regions, overriding central government and the MoE,considered it important to include special education in their ESDP and its funding.77