Early Education in Ethiopia: Progress and Prospects

Explored herein are historical roots of preschool through elementary grade education in the East Africa nation of Ethiopia. Also included are current difficult challenges to educational improvement as well as promising developments such as greater involvement of private institutions, organizations, and individuals in supporting Ministry of Education reform initiatives.     

中埃电气领域职业标准比较研究

以两国职业标准内容为指导,列举分析了中国维修电工高级职业标准和埃塞工业电子及控制技术五级标准的异同,旨在为两国职业标准的执行者和相关领域教师提供一定的借鉴。     

Inequality in Ethiopian higher education: reframing the problem as capability deprivation

The revitalization of Ethiopian higher education (HE) has been underway since the early 2000s. As well as the economic optimism evident in the ‘knowledge-driven poverty reduction’ discourse, social equity goals underscore the reform and expansion of the system. Notwithstanding the widening participation and the equity policy provisions put in place, the problem of inequality has persisted along the lines of ethnicity, gender, rurality and socio-economic background. This paper reviews major equity policy instruments and highlights the enduring inequalities in Ethiopian HE. It argues that this persistence is related in part to the ways in which the problem is represented in policy, and that redressing the problem necessitates framing inequality as capability deprivation rather than as issues of access and disparities in enrolment.     

Effectiveness of a satellite educational television program for Ethiopian secondary education

This study examined the actual practice and effectiveness of a satellite educational TV program in Ethiopian secondary schools. Participants in the survey were 228 students and 63 teachers from secondary schools. The results of the data analysis indicate that Ethiopian students and teachers scored highly in the evaluation areas. Levels of students’ general satisfaction with the satellite educational TV program were not equal for the variables of location and gender. It was also found that for students, learning demand, learning content, and class management were factors affecting their satisfaction with the satellite educational TV programs. For teachers, learning content and class management were the factors. The statistical mean difference in the satisfaction with the satellite educational TV program was between students and teachers. These findings suggest that the satellite educational TV program has the possibility of improving the quality of education in Ethiopian secondary schools.     

Teachers’ career ladder policy in Ethiopia: an opportunity for professional growth or “a stick disguised as a carrot?”

In response to the ever-declining status of the teaching profession, and its adverse effects on the country's educational system, the Federal Ministry of Education in Ethiopia introduced a policy of the teachers’ career ladder in 1994. While reformers believe that the introduction of the policy has improved the condition of the teaching profession, the net gains of the policy remain deceptive and even, in part, reduce some of the benefits teachers used to enjoy in the single salary scheme in the past. Among other things, central to the claims of the policy's advocates stands an improved salary scale for teachers. While this was admittedly true by the time the policy was introduced, the gain in salary raise has gradually been lost to the bureaucratic hurdles and watchdog structures erected to screen teachers’ eligibility at each stage of the career ladder. After critically assessing the major aspects of the policy, along with the voices of Ethiopian teachers, the current study argues that the policy of the teachers’ career ladder in Ethiopia is another prototypical case of a failed experiment both in terms of improving the lives of teachers and maintaining their professional rights.     

埃塞俄比亚职业技术教育的现状及其发展方向

埃塞俄比亚位于东非之角，2004年其总人口为 69 127 0(X)人，是非洲大陆仅次于尼日利亚的第二人 口大国。土地面积113万平方公里，具有三千年的文 明史，也是非洲历史上没有被殖民统治的两个国家之 一，首都亚的斯亚贝巴是非盟和联合国非洲经济委员 会的总部所在地，号称非洲之     

‘For good,God, and the Empire’: French Franciscan sisters in Ethiopia 1896−1937

In 1897, four French Franciscan sisters arrived in Ethiopia, having been summoned there by the Capuchin missionaries. In 1925, they ran an orphanage, a dispensary, a leper colony and 10 schools with 350 girl students. The students were freed slaves, orphans and upper-class Ethiopian and European girls. After providing a brief background to the relations between the Ethiopian government and the missionaries, this article describes the general activities of the Sisters, the importance they dedicated to education, and their religious and political motives. In the second part, it analyses the sociological backgrounds of the female students and the way in which education intersected with gender, class and race. Third, it reconstructs the multiple power relations within which the Sisters’ educational work was embedded. Finally, it demonstrates how schooling girls in a class-based manner – in conformity with the Franciscan Sisters’ perceptions about what lower-class and upper-class women should be – enabled them to secure relations with Ethiopian political elites. These relations both benefited the Ethiopian elites and furthered the cause of French imperialism.     

Re-orienting Ethiopia’s educational policy in the classical humanist perspectives of renaissance utopias

Ethiopia has launched a grand scheme of renaissance to realise fast-paced economic growth. The two Growth and Transformation Plans spanning five years each (2010/11– 2015/16 and 2016/17 – 2020/21) outlined major targets towards which the country intends to mobilise all its resources. In the education sector, this vision is understood as producing a workforce that can realise massive industrialisation. However, what is conceived as ‘renaissance’ in Ethiopia and what kind of education is viewed as capable of bringing it is very mechanical, reductive and utilitarian compared to the Renaissance movements of the late-medieval Europe, which were holistic endeavours to culturally uplift and humanise individuals and societies. The purpose of this paper is to compare the educational views of Christian humanists – the European renaissance thinkers who wrote the early-modern renaissance utopias – with what is conceived today as ‘renaissance’ education in Ethiopia as embedded in major educational policy documents.     

Muscularity,Heavy Athletics and Urban Leisure in Ethiopia, 1950s–1970s

This article focuses on the development of heavy athletics in urban Ethiopia during Haile Selassie's reign. In an attempt to modernise the country, educational institutions and missionary movements such as the Young Men's Christian Association were used to create healthy citizen bodies. By focusing on weightlifting, bodybuilding and wrestling, the article shows different trajectories of institutionalisation due to specific ideas about modernity and global sports. As a way of showcasing self-improvement, and by lucrative bodybuilding performances, urban leisure arguably paved the way in Ethiopia for the muscular male body as an ‘acceptable' aesthetic form.