Engaging and responding to local voices: the case of children's schooling in rural Ethiopia and the implication for development theory and practices

发展中国家所有儿童接受教育的经济和社会效益得到广泛承认，并促使全球和国家各级承诺让世界上所有儿童接受教育。经过多年的各种全球和国家发展倡议，世界上越来越多的儿童入学。特别是，在过去十年中，发展中国家的入学率显著提高，但人们普遍认识到，让特定类别的儿童，如女性、农村儿童、冲突局势中的儿童、身体或智力残疾儿童、难民或无国籍儿童、或来自牧民社区的儿童入学一直存在问题。此外，许多在发展中国家入学的儿童在离开学校时几乎没有学到什么东西，而且还没有完成小学教育的全部课程。因此，尽管全球努力后入学率大幅增加得到了承认，但研究人员将我们的注意力转向了那些仍然失学的儿童，以及平等，质量和学习的问题。根据联合国教科文组织（2015），目前全球有5800万小学适龄儿童失学。这与2000年联合国首脑会议上作出的到2015年实现全民教育的承诺形成鲜明对比。目前，大多数失学儿童都在撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA），这比1999年有所增加，当时非洲失学儿童的比例为40%（教科文组织，2015年）。尽管早些时候的乐观态度（如2008年全球监测报告），但最近教科文组织表示，“自2007年以来，在减少全球失学儿童比率和人数方面几乎没有取得任何进展”（教科文组织和儿童基金会，2015-17年）。这是一个令人担忧的趋势，尤其是对于农村儿童来说，因为他们经历着最大的需求剥夺，而缺乏基本服务和基础设施发展又加剧了这种情况（Grantham-McGregor et al. 2007;另见Filmer and Pritchett 1999）。以埃塞俄比亚为例，我的博士论文考虑了影响农村儿童小学入学、未入学和辍学的因素。我还注意到贫穷、未受过教育和农村人口的观点被排除在关于问题持续存在的辩论之外，因此我的研究着眼于儿童、他们的父母和教师的声音。《国际发展》的研究人员以前强调了听取人们对影响他们的问题的看法的价值。根据这一观点，我对理解学校教育问题的研究产生了一种罕见的洞察力，他们自己的观点。通过这个项目，我的目标是将调查结果带回社区，以进一步激发兴趣并引发建设性的辩论，从而挑战政策制定者，发展实践者，捐助者和社区本身。博士的研究结果将被拍成电影，让不识字的社区真正参与进来。电影放映后的讨论将为儿童和家长提供一个机会，让他们审视自己的教育道路和决定，并帮助他们从电影中接触到的其他故事中获得灵感。我的目标是在表演和电影中描绘与农村儿童教育有关的各种故事，以许多农村人能够理解的方式。这将提高意识，提供反思的空间，提供质疑社会规范的机会，并可能影响态度和做法，教师也将有机会反思自己的作用，并将所学知识应用于实践。同样，捐助国和决策者也将受益于从儿童及其父母的生活经验中学习，并使其反映出现有政策的影响和有待解决的差距。

The economic and social benefits of educating all children in developing countries are widely recognised and brought about global and national level commitments to get schooling to all children in the world. Following many years of varied global and national development initiatives increasingly many of the world's children are enrolled in school. In particular, in the last decade the enrolment rate has increased significantly across the developing world, however, it is widely recognised that bringing to school specific categories of children such as those who are female, rural, in conflict situations, have physical or intellectual disabilities, are refugees or stateless, or from pastoralist communities has met with persistent problems. In addition, many of those children who enrol in developing countries leave school with little learning and before they complete the full course of primary schooling. Therefore while the considerable increase in enrolment following the global effort is acknowledged, researchers have directed our attention to those children that are still out of school and to questions of equality, quality and learning.According to UNESCO (2015) currently there are 58 million primary school age children globally that are out of school. This stands in stark contrast to the promises made in the 2000 UN summit to create Education for All children by 2015. The majority of out of school children are currently found in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), which is an increase from 1999 when the African share of out of school children stood at 40% (UNESCO 2015). Despite earlier optimism (e.g. GMR 2008), recently UNESCO stated that 'there has been virtually no progress in reducing the global rate and number of out-of- school children since 2007' (UNESCO and UNICEF 2015-17). This is a worrying trend, especially regarding rural children, as they experience greatest need deprivation, exacerbated by lack of essential services and infrastructural development (Grantham-McGregor et al. 2007; also see Filmer and Pritchett 1999).Taking Ethiopia as a case study, my PhD thesis considered the factors that affect primary school enrolment, non-enrolment and dropout for rural children. Also noting the exclusion of poor, uneducated and rural people's views from ongoing debates as to why the problem persists, I aimed my research on the voices of children, their parents and teachers. Researchers in International Development previously highlighted the value from hearing people's views on matters that affects them. Following this view my research towards understanding schooling problems have generated a rare insight into the problems their own perspectives. With this project, I aim to take back the findings to the communities to further generate interest and spark constructive debate in the way that can challenge policy makers, development practioners, donors and communities themselves. The PhD findings will be turned into film to give genuine participation of the communities that are not able to read or write. The discussion following the screening of the film will give an opportunity for children and parents to examine their own schooling path, decisions and help them gain inspirations from other stories they were exposed to by the film. I am aiming to depict various stories in the performance and the film related to rural children's schooling in the way many rural people can relate to. This will raise consciousness and provide space for reflection, an opportunity to question social norms and potentially influence attitudes and practices.Teachers too will have opportunity to reflect on their own role and apply what they learn into practice. Similarly it will benefit donor countries and policy makers to learn from lived experiences of children and their parents and make them reflect the implications of existing policies and gap to be addressed.