African Education Sectors Committed to Improved AIDS responses

From 28-10-2009 to 30-10-2009 (Mali) 

The Bamako+5 Conference on Contractual Teachers was organized by the Ministry of Education, Literacy and National Languages of Mali, Education International (EI) and the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA). Approximately 200 participants, representing government ministries and civil society organizations from some 20 African countries, gathered for three days to review progress since the 2004 Conference and to make recommendations for further progess.

This included the following recommendations adopted by the Conference participants:

1) That recruitment of untrained teachers be gradually phased out by 2015;
2) That all categories of teachers serving in formal and non-formal settings, as well as in the different subsectors of education, be recognized and supported in their professional and career development;
3) That teacher training and professional development be set within a global vision that integrates life-long learning.

With support from the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education, HIV and AIDS was one of the sub-themes built in the Conference agenda. This included a plenary presentation and a parallel session on HIV and teachers. In addition, various IATT publications (approximately 470 copies in 6 titles) were distributed to the participants.

On behalf of the IATT, Peter Badcock-Walters from EduSector AIDS Response Trust (ESART), presented to the plenary session an overview of the evidence regarding the impact of HIV and AIDS on teachers, and suggested four possible national responses that could and should help to further mitigate and even prevent the impact of HIV on the education system. He highlighted that the impact of HIV must be analyzed and understood as a systemic management problem rather than a parallel public health problem.

This implies that the issue of HIV must be addressed in every aspect of education system training, data capture, management and reporting –and not separated into some special category and so become stigmatized for quite irrational reasons.

The plenary session was followed by a 90-minute parallel session, which was facilitated by Wouter van des Schaaf with support from Peter Badcock-Walters and Yongfeng Liu from the IATT Secretariat, and attended by 27 participants (80% from governments) from 16 countries. The rich exchange between the countries at the session made it clear that there were many different approaches to these problems, often affected by resources, experiences or stage of response to HIV.

• Regarding pre-service teacher training, some advocated diffusion of the subject of HIV subject across all other subject areas, while others supported a stand-alone, compulsory and examinable approach. Nevertheless, all understood and supported the importance of properly preparing teachers, either through PRESET for new teachers or via INSET for serving teachers.
  
• Regarding relief teacher responses to the problems of absenteeism, clear consensus was achieved that every country is concerned about the problem. However, limited responses (human and financial) meant limited capacity to respond. Most relief teaching responses are based on local solutions driven by the school and community, often involving unqualified teachers.

Two recommendations were formulated and agreed by the parallel session and reported to the plenary:

• The education sector policy (with integrated HIV response provision) should be reviewed to ensure that regulations exist to facilitate adequate response and management of pre-service teacher training, absenteeism and many other developing HIV-related challenges. This should be a consultative process involving access to best available data.
  
• The education sector should identify and access models of best practice in pre-service teacher training, relief teaching and every other HIV-related systemic challenge, rather than duplicating the cost and time involved in developing required action plans. Such models are available via ADEA and other multi-lateral (and bi-lateral) development partners, but should be pro-actively requested where they are not immediately available.

In the Conference Communique adopted by the plenary, the national governments are called to mainstream life skills, including HIV and AIDS prevention and mitigation, into teacher training and development programmes.

In his presentation of 'Bamako+5 Conclusions’, AEDA Executive-Secretary Ahlin Byll-Cataria put forward one of the roles of ADEA after the Bamako+5 Conference as to “explore the possibilities for collaboration, synergy, complementarity and partnership with the various components of the Bamako+5 Conference” that include the IATT.