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══════════════════【立報】═══════════════════ |
| 教 育 專 題 深 入 報 導《2005-08-05》 |
| 本期內容 | |
| ◎ 餵飽肚皮 提升生活 貧窮國家推動中等教育 | |
| ◎ 肯亞孩童湧進學校接受免費教育 | |
| 餵飽肚皮 提升生活 貧窮國家推動中等教育 | |
| 策劃、編譯■成怡夏 | |
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Next Up for Developing Na-tions: Secondary Schooling 摘要 肯亞中部的庫馬利小學的家長與支持者已經開始興建中學部的校舍，幾間新教室的牆壁以當地淺色石頭砌成，離舊校舍僅幾步的距離。幾年前，當地家長開始為小學1到8年級生興建校舍時，新的世代就提出興建中學的構想，他們心目中的中學將以一個班級起始，再逐漸擴充到4個年級每個年級一班。 現在，這群家長聚集在庫馬利小學的樹下，討論在校園開設中學部的事宜。 庫馬利小學的校長彼得‧伊諾提堅定地說：「中學部必須開始。」他提起，肯亞中部地區有一所35人的中學已經成立，他們也不能落後。的確，這個附近有兩所小學的社區正認真著手此事。 在肯亞以及世界上其他窮困國家推動中等教育，是響應「讓所有人接受基本教育」教育措施下的努力。這是1990年高級國際會議設定的目標，隨後被聯合國採用作為千禧年發展目標之一部分，預計在2005年以前達成。 開發中國家的孩童過去15年大量湧入學校，逐步達成聯合國的目標，並興起學生可以接受更多教育的期望。同樣的，這些貧窮國家政策制定者相信，要在全球經濟競爭中脫穎而出，與中等教育脫不了關係──如此一來，學生可以獲得領先的知識與技能。因此許多國家的發展政策中都把這項信仰列入了教育重大政策中。在肯亞，提供全民免費的小學教育是姆瓦伊‧吉巴基總統2003年重掌政權後的幾項作為之一。2003年，該國小學生人數暴增到150萬人。 但是在中等教育這一塊就沒那麼幸運了。根據肯亞教育部門與地區教育官員表示，完成小學教育後，肯亞只有不到一半的孩子繼續升學，進入全國大約4千所中學就讀，這些學校中，有些學校尋覓不到足夠寬大與適當的校地。 地方上的努力，不僅是提供更多入學名額，還得讓唸中學的費用在家長能負擔的範圍內。地區行政人員與教師表示，公立的寄膳高中大約要花去庫布地區家長3萬肯亞先令（大約美金275元），這種新成立的本土中學則只需要1／3的費用。 不幸的是，即使這種較低的學費，仍舊讓這個地區的家長感覺負擔沉重。這裡咖啡是當地的主要商品作物（肯亞每年家戶平均收入為美金4百元）。因此，儘管教師的薪資由政府支付，想要用有限的預算打造出聽起來不錯的教育品質，仍舊是一大挑戰。 家長和政策制定者對長程教育的興趣，愈來愈符合國際捐款人和慈善組織的理想，過去30年，這些捐款都集中在基本教育上面，許多人相信，這樣的做法矯正了這些重獲主權的歐洲殖民國家過分重視高等教育的情況。當然，過份重視高等教育的教育政策也引來指責。「如果受過基本教育後就不能繼續下去，人們就不會再去學校了。」烏干達教育部長基杜‧馬庫布亞（Kiddu Makubuya）去年接受聯合國教科文組織新聞通訊訪問時這麼說。馬庫布亞非常關心中學教育的問題，並長時間支持這項政策。 「有一段時間，把小學教育擺在第一順位可能很重要。」華盛頓的非營利組織教育發展學院院長史蒂芬‧莫斯里表示：「但是現在，我們已經有能力把一些小學教育的資源移到中學教育這一塊了。當然，我們還需要更多資源。」 根據世界銀行的數字顯示，全球至少有37個國家已經達成普遍的基本教育，另有32個國家將在2015年前達成這個目標。在這70個國家中—大部分集中在南亞與撒哈拉沙漠的非洲地區──許多年幼的孩子肯定是在2015年以前也無法受到正規的教育，頂多是完成小學教育。然而增加高品質中學教育的障礙卻是難以克服的。專家表示，要辦好這個層級的教育，比起小學教育需要花費的錢為數倍以上，部份原因是中學教師薪水較高，軟硬體設備都較昂貴。所以，假如更多學生註冊入學，預算就會被耗盡。 在許多國家金錢卻是被「毫無效率」地被花費掉──比方說，輟學率高以及留級學生多。在另一些國家，教育則承受腐化的命運。若沒有在這兩個部分改善，國際捐款人在想跨越這些國家「有什麼」和「缺什麼」之間的鴻溝上，就會非常勉強。 世界銀行教育專家賈克伯‧布葛曼表示：「教育體系需要運作地更有效率；否則無法擴張。」但是增加效率通常意味著對抗根深蒂固的觀念以及特殊利益團體。舉例來說，在說法語的西非，通常必須花費口舌才能說服當地教師，讓學生退學對教育體系的傷害勝過幫助。他說：「他們認為留級和退學對於留下來的學生來說，有助於提昇教學品質。」 更重要的是，政策制定者往往在投資於小學教育還是進階教育上，面臨艱難的抉擇。假如小學教育品質或是近用權惡化了，能夠進入中學並能夠通過中學教育的人必然會減少。那時高等教育就成了問題，且抑制教師數目的產生。 從需求面來看，許多家庭在面對中學教育時，也出現失去一個較年長孩子的勞動力和付學費的困境，不能只有政府買單，獎學金和其他公共的補助都很重要。聯合國兒童基金教育長克林姆‧瑞特表示，這也是攸關公平的問題。他說：「對那些有好的成績表現，卻因為沒有經濟支援而得放棄繼續升學的孩子來說，某種形式的補助相當重要。」 專家勸告在討論這些困難時，還是當重新思考許多基本的問題。瑞特說：「與其說『中學教育』，不如說『小學後教育或訓練』。」 以小學後教育的理念，靠近家附近、有較快收益的技術訓練也可以提供給年輕人。專家表示，即使是一個最為「古典的」中學教育都應該包含許多相關的課程，以及像是AIDS等社會上重大議題。同樣的，替代方案也包含了提供遠距教學的工具、志工或社區空間，以降低教育成本，並給年輕人機會學習。舉例來說，在印尼，印製學習指南和規律的學習團體，加上老師面對面會談，也造就了數千名中學生。 另外，若有幾所學校使用許多相同資源的情況，像是實驗室等，傳統學校就可以重新改組。 「開發中國家都缺乏所有類型的典範，一但人們接受了良好品質的小學教育後，一定會想走出下一步的。」瑞特說。（資料來源／教育周刊） 原文 Parents and other supporters of Nkumari Primary School here have started to build, as their forebears built be-fore them. The walls of several new classrooms were par-tially up in January-light-colored local stone roughly mortared-just a short walk from the existing school.Just as parents constructed that hilltop building for grades 1-8 years ago, a new generation now wants a secondary school. It would start with a single grade or "form," adding one a year until all four forms were represented. Parents and others gather under a jacaranda tree outside Nkumari Primary School in Kenya to discuss the opening of a secondary school on the campus. 『A school must start," insisted the headmaster of Nku-mari Primary, Peter Kinoti Inoti, at a meeting of the sup-porters held over chicken stew in a primary classroom ear-lier this year. He reminded some 35 people that such schools were being started all over their area of central Kenya, and Nkumari must not be left behind. Indeed, the communities of two nearby primaries also had such pro-jects under way.The push for secondary schools in Kenya and elsewhere among the poorer countries of the world follows a widespread move toward free basic education for all. That goal was set in a high-level international meeting on education in 1990 and subsequently adopted by the U-nited Nations as one of its Millennium Development Goals, with a deadline of 2015. Children in developing countries have flooded into schools over the past decade and a half, bringing partial success toward meeting those aims and raising expecta-tions that more students will proceed to the upper grades. Equally, policymakers in poor and middle-income coun-tries generally believe the chance to compete vigorously in a global economy is linked to secondary education, in which students get advanced information skills. They are joined in that belief by many development strategists. Course Correction In Kenya, making primary education free across the country was one of the first acts of President Mwai Kibaki when he came to power in 2003. That year, the number of primary students rose by some 1.5 million, packing some schools. ("Children Flood Kenyan Schools To Get a Free Education," April 16, 2005) But that good news has worsened the picture at the sec-ondary level. Fewer than half the children who complete primary school move on to the nation's roughly 4,000 sec-ondary schools, many for want of places, according to the Kenyan Ministry of Education and regional education offi-cials.Enter the local efforts, which not only open more seats but also put the cost of secondary school within more parents' reach. While a public boarding high school can cost Nkubu-area parents more than 30,000 Kenya shillings, or about $275, the new homegrown secondary schools will cost only a third as much, local administrators and teachers said. Unfortunately, even that lower cost will strain many parents in this area, where coffee, with its tumbling prices, is the main cash crop. (The average annual income in Kenya is about $400.) And trying to create sound educa-tional quality on such a small budget, even with the gov-ernment paying for teachers, will be a challenge. Still, parents' and policymakers' interest in education beyond the initial years is more and more matched by that of international donors and organizations, which for three decades have largely focused on the basic education that is widely thought to pay the greatest social dividends. That focus, many believe, helped correct an overemphasis on tertiary, or higher education in many formerly Euro-pean-governed countries just after they won independence. But it also led to a single-mindedness that education of-ficials in developing countries decry. "If there is no way to continue ?past basic education, people won't come to school, and they won't stay in school," Uganda's education minister, Kiddu Makubuya, told Education Today, a newsletter of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, last year.Longtime advocates of secondary education share Mr. Makubuya's concern. 『For a period of time, making primary education a pri-ority was probably essential," said Stephen F. Moseley, the president of the Academy for Educational Development, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that works abroad. "But now, we're able to anticipate that some of the resources going into primary education could go into sec-ondary," he said, "and we'll still need more." At least 37 countries worldwide have achieved universal basic education, and another 32 at least are likely to reach the goal by 2015, according to World Bank figures. And even in the 70 countries-most in South Asia and sub- Sa-haran Africa-where some young children will almost cer-tainly continue without a formal education past that date, many more are attending and finishing primary school. Yet the barriers to increasing high-quality secondary education are formidable. Education at that level costs on average several times what primary education does, experts say, in part because secondary teachers earn more and materials and equipment are more expensive. So if significantly more children enroll, budgets run out. And in many countries what money there is is spent "inefficiently"-with rates for dropping out and repeating grades high, for instance. And in some, education suffers from corruption as well. Without improvements in these two areas, international donors are reluctant to make up the gap between what countries have and what they need. 『The system needs to function more effi-ciently," said Jacob Bregman, an education spe-cialist for the World Bank, speaking in a person-al capacity. "Otherwise, you can't expand it." Hard ChoicesBut increasing efficiency often means going against deeply held views, as well as special in-terests. For example, Mr. Bregman said, in French-speaking West Africa, teachers must often be convinced that student failure harms rather than helps the system. "They think a healthy dose of repetition and drop-ping out is improving the quality of those that last," he explained. What's more, policymakers face hard choices between spending on basic school-ing or on more advanced educa-tion. If quality or access at the primary level deteriorates, fewer children will be able to enter or succeed in the sec-ondary grades. Higher education then becomes out of the question, curbing the number of teachers produced. On the demand side of the equation, many families have difficulty both forgoing the labor of an older child and paying the fees often associated with secondary education. The government can't foot the bill alone, and yet scholar-ships and other public subsidies are critical, too. It's a matter of perceived fairness, argued Cream Wright, the chief of education for the United Nations Chil-dren's Fund and a native of Sierra Leone. "For the child who has earned good results and wants to get in, but can't afford it, there must be some form of subsidy," he maintained.Experts advise that addressing those chal-lenges requires rethinking some basics. "Instead of talk-ing about 'secondary ed,' talk about postprimary educa-tion and training," Mr. Wright suggested. That way, technical training close to home with faster payoffs can be included among the options offered to young people, as long as it includes enough abstract con-tent to prevent closing off educational opportunities in the future. Even a "classical" secondary education should be founded on a relevant curriculum, with information on socially important issues such as AIDS, many authorities say.Likewise, alternative means of providing education that make use of distance-learning technologies, volunteers, or community spaces can reduce costs and give more youths a chance to learn. In Indonesia, for instance, printed study guides and regular study groups, plus face-to-face meetings with teachers from an associated school, have helped thousands master secondary-level studies.Also, traditional schools can be re-organized, as when nearby institutions use the same resources, such as a science lab. 『Countries have developed all sorts of models," Mr. Wright said. "Once people get a good-quality primary education, they want the next step." |
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| （回目錄） | |
| 肯亞孩童湧進學校接受免費教育 | |
| 策劃、編譯■成怡夏 | |
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Children Flood Kenyan Schools To Get a Free Education 3年前，肯亞奈洛比的一月午後，學校開學第一天，有3千名新生出現在奧林匹克公立小學，如此多的學生，測試了這所首都學校的領導應變能力──對全國 1萬7千所學校也是如此──以完成國家領導讓所有孩童免費接受小學教育的目標。 當時，由於教室裡面學生人數過多，許多學生無法註冊，家長對著教師咆哮，還威脅要燒掉校長的辦公室。姆瓦伊．吉巴基（Mwai Kiba-ki）總統所領導的全國彩虹聯盟政府下，決定承擔起提供免費小學教育的重責大任，結果有超過一百萬的新生湧進全國各地的公立小學。 其實，這項教育承諾數十年來為肯亞的政治人物和國際教育合同的紙上協定所訴求和推動，但是在東非2千9百萬人口中卻未完全實現。當地的小學教育包括了1到8年級生。 肯亞多年來推動提供免費小學教育，主要是包括全球教育運動（這個組織包括了全國教育協會和美國教師聯盟等）幾個國際組織，要求美國和其他富裕國家增加對於貧窮國家的支持，讓所有孩童都能接受教育。 儘管事前就被警告可能會遇見的困難，和學校與國際組織一起工作的肯亞人都對新政府是否具備能力承擔起這項教育計劃都表示樂觀。舉例來說，這個國家面臨嚴重的師資短缺問題，而女孩在農村地區家庭是協助母親進行家務和照顧弟妹的重要角色，上學後也對家庭造成影響。而更嚴峻的挑戰則是，在這個國家中有超過2百萬人罹患AIDS。 致力於國際教育、衛生和早期教育等議題的基督教兒童基金會肯亞辦公室負責人柯耶王表示，新學生的到來必然對學校產生衝擊。過去設計為一班40人的教室，在引入免學費政策後，都湧入超過一百名學生。「過去因為學費問題，許多窮困家庭情願選擇食物，不讓小孩受教育；現在許多學校內學生坐在樹下學習，或是在空曠的地方上課。現在是乾季，等到雨季時問題會浮現出來。」他說。 免費小學教育的願景，從1960年代就是肯亞政治訴求的一部份。肯亞自1963年從英國脫離獨立後的總統肯亞塔時期起，該國最貧困的地區就已採取取消小學學費的措施。1978年，莫伊總統進一步廢除所有小學的學費。到了1980年代早期，小學註冊人數大增，幾乎所有的小學學齡兒童都進學校了。但是要讓小學教育普遍化的結果，卻是面臨嚴峻的資源短缺問題。國際油價和政府的腐化都讓肯亞和其他非洲國家的經濟搖搖欲墜。肯亞政府將財政的責任轉嫁到社會部門的教育和醫藥問題，地方社區被迫收取學費。對許多肯亞家庭來說，超過一半的人口每天生活的費用不到美金一塊錢，因此恢復收取學費讓教育再度變得遙不可及。有些支持團體則認為，是世界銀行和國際貨幣基金等國際組織加重了這個問題。 位在華盛頓的「50年就夠了」（Njoki Njoroge Njehu）是個支持取消貧窮國家債務的組織，它們表示，這些組織要求肯亞和其他負債沉重的非洲國家接受嚴苛的財務計劃，等於是把它們推進無底深淵。「這是一個危機，這也意味著很多人無法送他們的孩子上學校。」從1980年代起就在肯亞高中教書的鈕胡女士表示：「現在人們見面彼此的問候語變成：你的孩子吃飽了嗎？有健康保險嗎？有去上學嗎？」 世界銀行非洲地區團隊資深教育顧問弗瑞區克森十分清楚，協助肯亞和其他非洲國家減少赤字的措施，可能對教育產生的損害；但是他說，許多非洲國家經濟崩盤，不當管理成為一種特有的病態，國際借款人在提供貸款時也更加小心謹慎，不需要財政方面的政策。 他說，政策勢必對教育和醫藥部分產生衝擊；儘管如此，替代方案卻不容易。他說：「最好的替代方案是已開發國家提供協助，不過工業國家好像並不打算這麼做。」世界銀行提供肯亞政府5千萬美元，作為一旦免費教育開辦後，學生買教科書和其他用品之用。 其他非洲國家近幾年推行免費教育，也同樣面臨註冊人數激增的問題，1994年，馬拉威的學費全免，小學註冊人數從190萬人激增到3百萬人。烏干達取消學費後，小學註冊人數由1996年的240萬人，2000年變成630萬人。 由16個發展組織組成、尋求對開發中國家兒童早年與小學教育更多援助的基礎教育聯盟執行長喬治‧英格姆表示，對許多國家來說，要達成普遍化的小學教育是艱難的任務。他說：「是有些進展，但是卻不如大家所期望的快速且深化。一開始就面臨發展的基本困難，很多國家長久以來為內戰所破壞，根本無法適當地養活他們的人民，更遑論教育他們了。」 據聯盟統計，全世界每16個適齡兒童就有一個沒有機會上學。一名肯亞前高中老師歐寶杜表示：「教育品質問題也很重要，政府需保證我們的學習有品質。主要挑戰是把資源分配給所有的學校，對此我們必須有長程的計劃。」（資料來源／教育周刊） |
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