Friends from East Timor immersed in education
[ UniNews Vol. 13, No. 8
17 - 31 May 2004 ] By Katherine Smith
A delegation from the Friendship School Project in East Timor experienced immersion in a real time teacher education classroom and visited with staff from the Faculty of Education during a recent visit to the University of Melbourne to learn about teacher education in Australia.
The University of Melbourne has links with the Friendship School Project (FSP) through first lady Kirsty Sword Gusmaos Alola Foundation, which funds and helps manage the project.
The FSP is designed to improve education standards in East Timor, and enhance East Timorese and Australian childrens awareness and appreciation of their own and other cultures.
The Project partners schools in Australia with schools in East Timor for information sharing, support through friendship and the provision of school supplies, joint cultural projects and shared learning. It also strives to provide professional development for East Timorese teachers, and encourages communities to become involved in local school projects through parents information meetings.
The Alola Foundation administers a University of Melbourne-funded program of scholarships to assist disadvantaged young women who show academic ability but would otherwise be unable to complete their secondary schooling.
The East Timor Young Womens Scholarship Fund was established during the Universitys 150th Anniversary and will provide $210,000 over four years. Last years allocation of $30,000 has already assisted almost 300 students.
International Technical Adviser to the FSP, Ms Ginny Kintz, says the scholarships are being targeted toward orphaned young women who lost their parents during the 1999 violence and need financial help to afford their schooling.
Apart from the cost in human and family life, the events of 1999 also destroyed, either partially or completely, more than 80 per cent of East Timors school buildings and related infrastructure. In most cases the teaching materials, school records and furniture were stolen and burned. As a result, when schools reopened students lacked even basic school supplies which were either unavailable or priced out of reach of most East Timorese people.
Recent improvements and hard work has seen the education sector rebuilding. There are currently approximately 700 government schools, 173 Catholic and 26 private schools, although at the primary level there is still only one teacher for every 62 students.
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