A protocol was signed to begin implementation of an educational project to train teachers working in Egyptian international schools between the chairperson of the BalancED Education Company, Ahmed El-Bakry, and the chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Research Methodology at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Robert Shockley, at an inaugural ceremony on Sunday evening.
The duo signed the protocol following the success and completion of the pilot phase of the project, which included training 16 teachers at FAU, all of whom were certified as professors to train 300 other teachers.
Supposedly the partnership will officially start in coordination with the Education Ministry that will inform the teachers, and the teachers have the right to reject or accept, none of them are obliged.
BalancEd and FAU signed the protocol in February. The past three months were dedicated to examining the pilot phase, which was chosen to determine whether their experiment and suggestion will succeed and will achieve their vision or not. Currently, the project will be officially applied with teachers from international schools in Egypt.
The teachers were trained by passing the three programmes included in the project partnership. These three stages are professional development, a teacher leadership certification programme, and a Master’s degree.
All the programmes require usage of certain technicalities capable of providing them with advanced and skilled methods of teaching.
The three programmes focused on knowledge that will make teachers more aware of arranging curriculums professionally for students, methods to evaluate and assess student performance, coaching and mentoring teachers on activities that will make them more skilled and reflective, as well as focusing on the importance of analysis.
The teacher leadership certificate programme is the most important phase, as it is dedicated to providing teachers with various educational experiences by teaching them theoretical knowledge and practical activities.
This programme also focuses on explaining to teachers the significance of good personal behaviours, including justice while dealing with students and also how to be supportive of teachers. It is a one-year programme and aims to teach leadership to teachers in both formal and informal ways as well as how to apply their newly developed skills.
Usage of technology and cultural and social issues is added into the teaching of the three programmes. Trained teachers will also be offered books and research beneficial to the accomplishment of the learning process at FAU.
Furthermore, the project enhances the creation of dialogue between teachers and students to ease their connection along for better performance in class.
Regarding the Master’s degree, in this stage the teachers will be taught advanced skills related to research, evaluation, modern technology in education, and problem solving.
The ceremony started with Egyptian and American national anthems and then with an opening speech by El-Bakry. During the speech, El-Bakry explained the roles of his company and how it offers an effective learning service for school students. He also explained the company’s services for students of governmental schools.
He added that their partnership and its education project aims to expand to other Arab nations, and also to work on qualifying more teachers and developing more education systems.
Daily News Egypt spoke with former member of parliament Hossam El-Badrawi about the future of education in Egypt amid current conditions.
El-Badrawi said it will not be easy to solve all the current problems in the Egyptian education system. It needs a long time but we can plan and work on constantly developing education in Egypt, he said.
“We must have a vision to develop education, and we already have a certain vision, but the main problem is the application of this vision, it’s usually hindered by teachers’ low qualifications,” he said.
We need to focus on teachers more than students; they are our main priority and the budget and ways of developing them are available, El-Badrawi added.
He concluded by saying that the education issue is a political issue that needs perseverance and sustainability to be solved, asserting that teachers must undergo advanced training.
Partners contributing in the educational project are KEMET, the representative of the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, and the Journey of Entrepreneurship (JOE), all of whom are working on teaching young learners entrepreneurship and financial literacy.
BalancED is educational company that provides variety of educational services, as well as human resources and training. FAU is based in the US and provides a learning system to enable the creation of professional leaders qualified for teaching.
