{"id":735939,"date":"2012-12-21T06:24:01","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T11:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dfid.gov.uk\/?p=12697"},"modified":"2012-12-21T06:24:01","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T11:24:01","slug":"homeless-schooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/735939","title":{"rendered":"Homeless schooling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each day en route to work I pass a perplexing sight - a large single parent family living and learning under a giant fig tree.\u00a0The hustle and bustle of crowded Dar es Salaam contains a large green space by the coast - like NY's Central Park.\u00a0Within it resides Agnes and her six children.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lessons under the tree<\/p><\/div>\n

Curiosity finally got the better of me and I stopped by to chat this morning and hand out some sweets for the children.\u00a0As usual, Agnes was spending the morning home schooling her children; aided by a blackboard and a hand drawn map of Africa.<\/p>\n

As I suspected Agnes trained and practiced as a teacher, before running foul of regulations.\u00a0She's lived for several years under the tree illustrated and clearly has a low regard for bureaucracy and rules that now no longer apply to her. Despite clearly being homeless and a 'family in need', it appeared that her children are relatively well nourished and healthy (I was asked for an anti-malarial bed-net) and that the home (or perhaps homeless) schooling was doing the trick.<\/p>\n

Her children spoke English confidently and I suspect were probably getting a better rounded primary education than many in formal schools\u00a0- if UWEZO's child literacy statistics<\/a> are to be believed.\u00a0At least the teacher was showing up regularly - which is not always the case according to one recent local survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The lesson to me was I suppose that education comes in all shapes and sizes and formal schooling isn't always the solution.\u00a0I spent some time this week discussing how funds from Global Partnership for Education<\/a> might support Tanzanian children and the relative merits of formal and non-formal delivery.<\/p>\n

Whether Agnes's approach is a step too far in the non-formal direction must remain to be seen. Something to mull over during the Christmas break..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each day en route to work I pass a perplexing sight – a large single parent family living and learning under a giant fig tree.\u00a0The hustle and bustle of crowded Dar es Salaam contains a large green space by the coast – like NY’s Central Park.\u00a0Within it resides Agnes and her six children. Lessons under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-735939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-35rZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}