A fellow’s success story – Nadia Salama Hashem Hassan: Egypt implements new national quality standards for Adult Education and Learning

The Adult Education Authority (AEA) in the Egyptian Ministry of Education has just adopted a roadmap for the implementation of new national adult education quality standards.

This roadmap is based on the work of UIL’s former CONFINTEA Fellow Ms Nadia Salama Hashem Hassan, Adult Education Researcher at the Egyptian Adult Education Authority. During her fellowship at UIL in 2015, she developed a national strategy for improving quality standards in Egypt together with experts at UIL.

Ms Hashem Hassan subsequently shared some insights with UIL on her experience in advancing the strategy upon her return to Egypt after her sojourn in Hamburg. Among the highlights she mentioned were the opportunity of setting up a quality unit with specialized researchers, field observers and quality coordinators in each of the 27 branches of the AEA. Her participation in the Fellowship Programme enabled her to identify and further deepen her knowledge on the subject of quality requirements in Education, which enabled her to organize further workshops on this subject and thus become a multiplier in her country.

All in all, she reflects that her “participation in the CONFINTEA Fellowship Programme has contributed to her own rapid professional growth in policy development, preparation and implementation of plans and programmes”.

Although continuous changes in leadership posed a challenge to implementation upon her return, meanwhile a new ALE training package, a monitoring and evaluation system and training of adult education personnel are under way. In cooperation with the UNESCO office in Cairo, UIL continues to support Ms Hashem and the implementation of the roadmap of adult education quality standards in Egypt.

From 2011 to 2017, UIL welcomed 38 fellows (19 men and 19 women,31 of whom were government officials and 7 NGO representatives) from 32 countries. The last cycle was organized in November 2017.