Since the 10th of July, with the collaboration of a team of eight professors from the National Pedagogical University of Kinshasa, the Foundation for the Social Promotion of Culture is organizing a new session of on-going training for Primary School teachers from three provinces of the city: West, Central and East.
It is already the fifth edition of this training, funded by the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID), as part of the project that aims to strengthen the education system in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
450 teachers have been invited to the training through the National Training Service (SERNAFOR) of the Congolese Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Vocational Education, which collaborates with the FPSC in this project. At the end of 2014 it is expected to have reached a total of 1.350 beneficiaries of this activity, including participants of previous sessions, which have been organized since 2011.
The seminars, with 150 participants each, are taking place on the premises of the Vedruna School in Ndjili district in the western part of the capital. The school has been built with the funds of AECID as a part of the same project; has a great reputation in the area and was selected as a center for the National Examinations that are taken at the end of Primary School (TENAFEP), along with the State Examination, becoming this way the school of reference in what concerns the quality of education.
Participants in this new edition of training benefit from updating their skills in Teaching French and Mathematics, learning new approaches to teaching and ways to introduce them into the school curriculum. After lectures there will be a practical part consisting of team work, and finally, the knowledge acquired by the participants will be evaluated during the final test. This year, as a result of the evaluation process developed in order to know if teachers are able to apply what they have learnt during seminars in the classroom, have been added reading and writing workshops with the aim to help teachers to read and speak correctly.
In addition, special training in Human Rights issues will be carried out by a group of expert lawyers, that for several years are conducting similar awareness-raising sessions on Child Protection Laws and Human Rights in general, in schools of Kinshasa. FPSC last year introduced this important issue in a teacher training program, aiming to promote Human Rights, and to support the efforts of the Congolese Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Vocational Education in the reform of civic education, convinced that well-trained teachers in this field will be the best educators in Human Rights, and that it will help to reduce present high levels of violence in schools.
Various organizations working for the promotion of education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in Kinshasa, were invited to seminars, including UNIFEC, that also organizes training of literacy for Primary School teachers, and International Rescue Committee, that in the DRC, among others, is devoted to the promotion of educational initiatives.
The closure of seminars is scheduled on August 14th.