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

让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认可，并促使全球和国家两级承诺让世界上所有儿童都能上学。在多年来各种全球和国家发展倡议之后，世界上越来越多的儿童入学。特别是，在过去十年中，整个发展中世界的入学率大幅提高，然而，人们普遍认识到，特定类别的儿童，如女性、农村儿童、处于冲突局势中的儿童、肢体或智力残疾儿童、难民或无国籍儿童或来自牧民社区的儿童，在入学方面遇到了长期的问题。此外，在发展中国家入学的许多儿童离开学校时几乎没有学习，还没有完成小学教育的全部课程。因此，在承认全球努力后入学率大幅增加的同时，研究人员将我们的注意力转向那些仍然失学的儿童以及平等、质量和学习问题。根据教科文组织(2015)的数据，目前全球有5800万小学适龄儿童失学。这与2000年联合国首脑会议做出的到2015年为所有儿童创造教育的承诺形成了鲜明对比。大多数失学儿童目前在撒哈拉以南非洲(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)。尽管早些时候对此持乐观态度(例如2008年全球监测报告)，但最近教科文组织表示，“自2007年以来，在降低全球失学儿童比率和儿童数量方面几乎没有任何进展”(教科文组织和联合国儿童基金会2015-17年)。这是一个令人担忧的趋势，特别是关于农村儿童，因为他们经历了最大的需求匮乏，缺乏基本服务和基础设施发展加剧了这一趋势(Grantham-McGregor等人)。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率、未入学和辍学的因素。我还注意到，穷人、未受教育的人和农村人的观点被排除在正在进行的关于为什么这个问题仍然存在的辩论之外，我的研究针对的是儿童、他们的父母和教师的声音。国际发展部的研究人员此前曾强调，听取人们对影响他们的问题的看法是有价值的。遵循这一观点，我对理解学校教育问题的研究产生了对问题本身的难得的洞察。通过这个项目，我的目标是将调查结果带回社区，以挑战政策制定者、发展实践者、捐助者和社区本身的方式，进一步激发兴趣并引发建设性辩论。博士的研究结果将被拍成电影，让那些不会读写的社区真正参与进来。电影放映后的讨论将为孩子和家长提供一个机会来审视自己的上学道路、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，以许多农村人可以理解的方式。这将提高人们的意识，提供反思的空间，提供一个质疑社会规范并潜在地影响态度和做法的机会。教师也将有机会反思自己的角色，并将所学应用于实践。同样，捐助国和政策制定者学习儿童及其父母的亲身经历，并使其反映现有政策的影响和需要解决的差距，将使它们受益。

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.