Curriculum Reform Project to train English language teachers

Participants and officials from the Curriculum Reform Project gathered at the graduation ceremonies.

Graduation ceremonies for English language teachers participating in the Curriculum Reform Project was held on Tuesday afternoon at the headquarters of the Ministry of Education. Participants in the project received certificates of qualification for the first and second stages of teaching English language to students at the elementary, preparatory and secondary levels of education.

The celebration was attended by Dr. Abdel-Salam al-Jawfi, Minister of Education, and British Ambassador Timothy Torlot, as well as Professor Gamil al-Khalidi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Educational Curricula, Professor Muhammad Zubarah, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Training as well as other education officials.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Offices G.O.F Curriculum Reform Project is funded by the British government at a total cost of $2 million dollars. The project began in October 2005 to work with the Ministry of Education in Yemen under the supervision of Ms. Tanya al-Ameer, G.O.F. Curriculum Reform Project Manager.

The program is being implemented in the three regions of Sana’a, Taiz and Aden. “We are testing the program in these regions very carefully to make sure of its suitability,” al-Ameer said. 

She said that they choose Sana’a because it is very interesting and has the widest range of diversity. “We have some brilliant teachers and very good schools; we also have very poor schools and weak language teachers,” she added. The project works in a selection of schools up to about forty each in Sana’a, Taiz and Aden, where the training and qualification of teachers in the field of English language teaching is conducted by British experts. This training consists of four stages, of which Yemeni teachers have successfully completed the first and second.

The Yemeni government decided to introduce English language education in grade 4, a move that is supported by the Curriculum Reform Project. “This project deals with materials and giving the students new books,” al-Ameer said. “The books themselves contain subjects of cultural diversity, which is an improvement in the Yemeni environment that is needed for both teachers and children.”

“When we introduce children to a foreign language, they need to see everything [in that language] that is very familiar to them,” she stated. “We have curriculum materials [provided by the project] that reflect Yemeni habits, culture and context.”

Al-Ameer added that teaching young children is very different from teaching older children, and at the moment there is no specific training in Yemen for language teachers of young children. Because of this, it is a very important project that introduces new teacher educational programs that qualify teachers in Yemen for the different focus and challenges of working with Yemeni children. 

“What we did was introduce new teacher education programs in the three regions of Sana’a, Taiz and Aden,” al-Ameer said. “That was 8 weeks of intensive study for teachers about the theory behind teaching children.”  Al-Ameer stated that participants in the project learn about the brain and psychology of children in the different stages of child development. “We looked at appropriate ways to interact with children at each stage of development to get the maximum benefits of learning.”  

Teachers who have knowledge of psychology and brain development will get the maximum benefits out of the education system in Yemen. “If the children know what they are doing and understand why they are doing it, their learning will be more effective. If something does not work, we can say ok, well I tried that and it did not work, so let’s try this,” al-Ameer added. 

If children have good self-esteem and confidence and feel better about themselves, they may actually do better in learning English, she said. The students in grade 4 are wide open to learning; at this stage children can learn in so many different ways, and what we have to do is expose them to a language-rich environment, so they can absorb things.

Al-Ameer said that the point of the project is to build the capacity of the ministry in the entire program. The project is training teachers, inspectors and trainers all the time because the point is to build something which the ministry can run with local teachers, trainers and inspectors that have been trained by the project. The idea is that support will continue for the running of the program and to build the capacity of the ministry to design and run other programs in the future on its own.

The main purpose of the program is to improve the teaching of English in Yemen. “That means providing the best materials and designing materials [specific to] Yemen and Yemeni students. As the situation exists now, students leave high school and they cannot actually speak English. Some organizations in Sana’a could not find people with good English language skills,” al-Ameer said.

Yemeni students have the opportunity for hundreds of scholarships every year from America, the UK, Canada and Holland. “Every scholarship application goes in failing because [the applicants] do not have the basic language skills, so the scholarships are wasted every year,” al-Ameer said.

Regarding the important role of the Ministry of Education, al-Ameer said that the Minister is very supportive of the project. “He carefully goes and visit schools where we are running the program; we have a deep cooperation with the offices in Sana’a and other regions,” she said.

The program will introduce a new curriculum for training teachers in a new methodology. “We have trained one hundred and forty teachers in the three regions, and at the moment we have 80 of those teachers working in the program. In fact, teaching languages to a young child demands a very good teacher. They need a particular set of knowledge skills,” said al-Ameer.   

“The child knows if a teacher does not want to be a teacher and if they do not want to be in the classroom. The child will then think why should they be here?” stated al-Ameer.

Al-Ameer said that she loves Yemen and has been here since 1997 working in the field of education. She started doing regional training programs for the Ministry. “I love this country and its people and I believe that one of the important problems facing Yemen today is education,” she said.

Dr. Abdel-Salam al-Jawfi, Minister of Education, confirmed that the English language has become the international language all over the world, but that the courses in Yemen and scholarship opportunities for Yemenis are lacking at this time and this project will bring them back again. “This project needs the competencies and capabilities to execute it,” he said.

“We are working on a new methodology. Everyone who wants to be an English teacher must take a certificate for the teachers’ syndicate and there will be promotions for those who have this certificate,” al-Jawfi said. He thanked the British Ambassador and Ms. al-Ameer and the British government for their support of the project.

He also thanked the participants for attending the ceremony and the managers of the schools for their cooperation in the execution of the project.

Mohammad al-Nukhaili, a teacher, said that this project is training and qualifying teachers very successfully, with good effects.

“This project has helped teachers in many ways to develop their methodology because in Yemen we do not really care about how teachers are actually teaching. Our thought here is that we just want the students to obtain good grades, but we do not know how,” said Amal al-Kibsi, Supervisor at the Education Ministry.

Al-Kibsi said that the program provides Yemeni teachers with the knowledge and experience to teach and become better teachers in the future.  

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