By Abdou Mbye
The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) with funding from The Luminos Fund in partnership with Effective Intervention (EI), Child Fund and Future in Our Hands (FIOH) on Thursday 2nd March 2023 launched The Gambia Classes for Open Learning (GCOL) Programme at Kerewan in the North Bank Region.
The initiative is meant to bring transformative education for children of primary school age that are out of school in the Gambia. The accelerated learning program would provide students with foundational literacy and numeracy skills and has an intensive, child-centered, activity-based learning approach to reach the most marginalized out-of-school children targeting ages 8-14 who have either enrolled in school before or dropped out.
Speaking at the launching ceremony, the Minister for Basic and Secondary Education, Claudiana A. Cole emphasized that every human being is entitled to education because it is a fundamental human right and the Gambian constitution provides that everybody should have access to education.
“We can still encourage everyone to access education and that is what our partners like Luminos come to do in providing literacy and numeracy and those are the building block of education. Foundational learning and transformative education is the right footing to achieve quality education and the government cannot do it alone without the support of the partners in this endeavor,” Minister Cole posited.
In her opening remarks, Emily Joof, Associate Director of Programmes, Luminos Fund stressed that the ministry demanded support from Luminos Fund to support an accelerated learning curriculum for out-of-school children dubbed “The Gambia Classes for Open Learning” (GCOL) to provide a transformative education for children from aged 8-14 to catch up at an early grade level and to be integrated into government schools to prepare for life-long learning.
“The curriculum was prepared around October 2022 with the curriculum Directorate and we decided to pilot it and we interviewed and selected young people from existing government initiatives and offer them training and coaching and harnessed their potential as the backbone of this program. Our program is piloted in 2022/23 academic year with twenty classrooms in regions three and five by providing six hundred out-of-school children with foundational numeracy and literacy skills which covers grades 1, 2, and 3,” Director Joof intimated.
Mr. George Werner, Luminos Fund Board Member and Former Minister of Education, Liberia expounded that Luminos Fund was founded on the conviction that every child everywhere deserves a chance to experience joyful learning, especially those who are most in need.
“This is why we employed a child-centered learning approach knowing that children learn best when they are happy, loved, celebrated, and supported and this is not a task we do alone but in partnership with the education ministry. During my stay, we had fruitful meetings with partners like Effective Intervention, FIOH, and UNICEF through Child Fund the challenge is so huge that no one entity can do it alone and that is why we are an institution powered by the partnership,” Mr. Werner intimated.
Mr. Lamin Jaiteh, the Regional Education Director, region three thanked the ministry for hosting the launching of such a laudable initiative in the region, noting that the program would help alleviate the number of school children and also provide better education for the under-privileged for a brighter future.