The Pedagogy of Empowerment

‘Successful’ Alternative Education: Still Reproducing Inequalities? The Case of the Community School Program in Egypt

“…The above findings highlight the successes and challenges created by the CSP. This study confirms other findings (Farrell, 2002;Zaalouk, 2006) that demonstrate that the CSP succeeded in its declared goals which were increasing school access for children facing multiple social and economic barriers to their education, developing community partnerships, and forging an innovative educational model. Moreover, this study unpacks factors that were relevant to these participants' educational journeys: increased school access through physical proximity and a genuinely expense-free education; a quality education due to teacher excellence, friendly attitudes and relationship building; and the learning of social skills, such as talking well and confidently.…”

“…Community schools became an example of public-private and national-global partnership. UNICEF-Egypt solicited land donations from local landowners, created a partnership between the EMoE, local elders, UNICEF and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, the predecessor of the current Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, DFAIT), and provided technical assistance in the forms of curriculum development and teacher training (Zaalouk, 2006). EMoE paid the teachers' salaries.…”

“…Accordingly, there are different mutations of CBE in Egypt today, run by different entities: the One-Classroom Schools teach both academic subjects and vocational skills at the primary level and are managed by the EMoE; the Community Schools that are the legacy of the UNICEF-CSP in Egypt are currently administered largely by the Misr El-Kheir Foundation, an Egyptian NGO; the Girl-Friendly Schools specifically target closing the gender gap and are run by the National Council on Childhood and Motherhood; and the Friendly to Children in Difficult Circumstances Schools is a CBE program with greater flexibility run specifically to meet the different psychosocial needs of street children. Mainstream education has also been influenced by the UNICEF-CSP, as it triggered paradigm shifts within the EMoE at large, in areas such as curriculum development, pedagogical understanding, and public policy (Zaalouk, 2006). Figure 1 shows the various community schooling programs in Egypt in 2012/2013.…”

“…The focus of this paper is the UNICEF-Community School Program in Egypt (henceforth referred to as CSP). This program was designed to reach the unreached populations: children who face geographic, gender-based, and economic disadvantages, with a quality education (Zaalouk, 2006). Other key goals of the CSP were student democratization, active-learning and teacher education development (Zaalouk, 2006), in a context of government awareness that a vacuum of education in many rural populations and rote learning pedagogy for school-goers left many susceptible to fundamentalism (Ginsburg & Megahed, 2008;Sayed, 2005).…”

“…Previous studies have examined the institutional and governmental narratives and dynamics of the CSP, as well as ethnographic studies of graduates of the program (e.g., Farrell, 2002;Farrell, 2004;DeStefano et al, 2007;Hartwell, 1995;Hartwell, 1998;Zaalouk, 2006). However, a closer look reveals that some of these prior studies are advocacy in nature and have tended not to examine the pressures the students face after they leave the CSP program, nor do they examine how the education model has evolved over the years since its founding.…”