CAIRO, 15 May 2006 (IRIN) - The European Union has pledged to fund 200 new “girl-friendly” schools countrywide, in a joint bid with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) to work towards a greater inclusion of females in education.

“The schools will target girls in the most marginalised areas,” said Dalia Hassan, executive director of the NCCM girls’ education programme, “and encourage them to attend school in order to gain an education.”

The EU pledge, announced by NCCM Secretary-General Moushira Khattab on 8 May, is based on positive assessments of 500 existing girl-friendly schools established in recent years by the NCCM in seven governorates across Egypt. “We’re working from an existing, successful model, tried and tested by the NCCM,” said Karin Johansson, in charge of the EU delegation’s social, rural and civil society programmes.

Most existing girl-friendly schools are located in Upper Egypt, where school attendance rates – particularly among girls – are lowest. “We go where there aren’t any schools in the vicinity,” said Dalia. “There are many areas the education ministry hasn’t reached, and girls in particular find it difficult to walk more than two or three kilometres to go to school.”

While girl-friendly schools cater both to girls and boys, their curricula and administration are specifically designed to encourage girls – often burdened with traditional household responsibilities – to attend. “Girl-friendly schools enable children both to work with their parents and attend school,” said Dalia, adding that schools will be located in marginal villages, where there are no government schools. “A girl helping in the home cannot be expected to walk any more than two or three kilometres to attend school while also helping in the home during the course of her day. Instead of expecting girls to come to us, we go to them.”

In addition, curricula are tailored to meet the needs of rural children, Dalia said. “Curricula are also flexible enough so as to enable children to decide what they want to focus on, rather than simply imposing traditional modes of learning,” she said. Timings at the girl-friendly schools are also flexible, she said, thus enabling children to attend when possible for them, rather than as imposed by a central system.

Construction of the new schools is set to be complete by December 2006. “They will be up and running by February 2007,” said Dalia, adding that teachers were being specifically trained to work at the schools.

Funding for the schools comes within the context of a wider EU “Children at Risk” programme aimed at financing social projects for children in Egypt, to which a total of US $26 million has been earmarked, Johansson said. Other Children at Risk projects include “locally proposed projects for children, projects that work towards declaring villages Female Genital Mutilation-free and capacity building projects”, Johansson added.

According to the 2005 Human Development Report for Egypt, issued jointly by the United Nations Development Programme and the Ministry of Planning and Development, 35 percent of the national population cannot read or write, putting Egypt among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of illiteracy. The figure is worse for the female population, with 45 percent of girls and women over the age of 15 years old being illiterate.

* IRIN

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