Situational Analysis on Factors Impeding Female Participation in Teacher Training Programs in Refugee Contexts in Ethiopia: Final Report

Education is a key component to humanitarian support to refugees and aligns to the SDG 4 on the delivery of inclusive and quality education for all and to promote lifelong learning. To enable this, there has been significant investment to train qualified refugee teachers who can effectively teach children within the refugee camps in Ethiopia. However, this has been faced with a major uptake challenge, especially in limited participation of female refugee trainees.

This situational needs assessment seeks to determine the factors that have impeded the participation of female teacher candidates in incentive teaching and available teacher training initiatives to date and make recommendations for a well informed and evidence based training programme design that fits the needs and challenges of future female teachers.

The research was conducted between January and March 2020. It was led by VSO Ethiopia’s Education team, two international volunteers and twenty-one local research assistants. Drawing on participatory action research methodologies, the research engaged with 685 participants across many participant groups, including young girls aged 12-16 who are eligible to become incentive primary schoolteachers, drop-out teachers/female teachers who have left the (primary) teaching profession, existing female primary teachers (both national and incentive teachers), community leaders, including parents, camp leaders and religious leaders, representatives from Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs), INGO and/or NGO refugee education specialists and Agency for Refugee and Returnee (ARRA) representatives.