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EdQual ?

EdQual is three years into a five year programme of research aimed at defining and piloting initiatives that will improve the quality of education for the poorest people in the world and raise gender equity. Disadvantaged learners, including those in remote or overcrowded schools are particularly of interest to our research.

Institutions in Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, Bristol and Rwanda lead large scale projects on education quality themes.

This project aims to develop a resource in Tanzania which will contribute to supporting schools in developing a more inclusive school culture.

The research involve in-depth analysis of views and experiences of key people i.e. school and local education staff, parents, carers, pupils and surrounding community members on barriers or obstacles to learning and participation.  An investigation into how these barriers can be reduced, or eliminated will also take place.

The participants, mainly educational professionals, have varying understandings of educational inclusion where most of the participants perceived inclusion within the context of special educational needs and disability.Two workshop results revealed many barriers to educational inclusion in Tanzania and among those some of the main barriers identified were:

Lack of teacher training on special educational needs, disability and inclusion, Lack of resources, High teacher-pupil ratio and Geography (physical location of schools; distance; transportation etc)

The Action Research process has started at 8 volunteered schools and the schools have already established their core team who will be facilitators of development and improvement of more inclusive schools through the course of the research.