During the course of the 1990s, Egypt took the lead in improving girls’ access to education by developing innovative models for community education in poor rural areas. The goal of CETA was to increase access to quality, basic education in hard to reach areas especially for girls. The Project contributed to this through its purpose: to enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Education to deliver quality community-based education, particularly for girls, in Assiut, Sohag and Qena.
In remote communities where cultural attitudes, safety concerns and limited resources have traditionally discouraged the education of girls, opportunities now exist to include girls as well as boys in the classroom. Investing in the education of girls requires informed decision-making at every level of the education system.
Through partnerships among the Ministry of Education (MOE), CIDA, and UNICEF, reforms were implemented to foster the expansion of community education, and the design of curriculum that encourages child-centred approaches to learning.
FIT supported this initiative through capacity building support and technical assistance to both the MOE and UNICEF in the promotion of community education as well as innovative teaching and learning processes. Two other Canadian partners—the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education—University of Toronto and the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University contributed to the design of FIT's technical assistance in the areas of curriculum learning material development, teacher and supervisor training, and education assessments.
The Project focused on two initiatives – the One Classroom Schools of the Egyptian Ministry of Education and the Community Schools' Iniative of UNICEF – with the overall aim of affecting education reform in Egypt.