Education for All

Historical background
In 2002 the Danish NGO IBIS joined the Global Campaign for Education and began planning how to reach primary school children in Denmark. The campaign itself – Education for all makes a lot of sense but how could it give meaning to privileged children in a society where it is more than a right to school it is even a duty by law to be taught. At the same time IBIS considered how they could reach the teachers. What type of material would fit into the curriculum?

In the same year that a Pisa report was launched about reading skills, The Danish school system received a fairly low mark and considering it is one of the most expensive school systems in the world, it is serious concern. In all newspapers the quality of teaching was challenged. Teachers responded by claiming there was a lack of teaching/learning material.
Out of this challenge came the idea to produce reading material which at the same time could teach learners about Education for All. Another other important issue was that the material had to be given to schools for free. This meant that most of the work behind the book had to be donated or sponsored. The only salary goes to the coordinator of the campaign and this post is DANIDA funded.
In 2002, 24.000 learners joined the campaign. In year 2008, 183.000 learners, representing 27 % of all children in primary schools in Denmark joined the campaign. This is more than every fourth school child.

The reading Rocket: How do we produce the book?
In June every year four writers of children’s book were asked to write and donate a story. Some years we asked a more funding than we needed to get the right amount of writers but most writers are very willing to participate for the sake of the good case and because they get a chance to have their story produced in 200.000 copies which on a Danish scale with only a little more than 5 mill people is huge. Writers are free to write any good story, and if they could in some way connect to the educational theme it is great benefit but it is not compulsory.
Beside the four fiction stories IBIS has written factual stories about children coming from one of the countries in which IBIS has partnerships – mainly Africa or Latin America. This year the stories came from Sierra Leone where IBIS has a school programme for school children of refugee Next year’s book which is already being planned has stories from Mozambique. The stories are mainly portraits of children of school-going age, children e.g. working on the marked not going to school. These stories are written by an IBIS journalist. She has been in Mozambique in October collecting the portraits.

The editing and the laying out of the book is all donated work. The reading Rocket 2009 will hopefully have a much fresher look than this year and hopefully encourage even more learners to read it.

Teaching support material
Together with The reading Rocket Ibis has developed a teaching guideline to support teachers. The guideline mainly includes background material as well as good ideas on how to teach global education focused mainly on Education for All. The guidelines try to support different subjects in primary school such as language, social science, geography, music and art to give teacher the possibility to integrate the topics in the different subjects. IBIS has two interns, both students from university who mainly work on this material. Interns in a Danish system are normally in practicum for 6 months so it is a good chance to develop and finish the product. In 2009 we will include on IBIS homepage, a site mainly for teachers and older students where they can find extra material about Education for All, background material about Mozambique, statistic about the school situation in Mozambique as well as extra ideas on teaching methods.

How do teachers enter the campaign and how does distribution take place?
In mid October we sent 2600 invitation letters to all primary and private schools in Denmark. The distribution is maintained by The Center of Teaching Support Material. We have 16 centers all around the country, one in Greenland and one in North Germany where there are a number of Danish speaking schools. These centers distribute the invitations for free and will also deliver The reading Rocket for free in April 2009.
Each letter of invitation has one poster and 25 folders for each school and the letter is addressed to the Librarian at the school. The invitation invites teachers to participate in the campaign with their classes and to register on the homepage from November 1st 2008 to January 9th 2009. In the letter to the Librarian we do recommend the library to register all classes at the school in one mail, but teacher are free to register the class themselves.

January 9th is last day to enter the campaign. The final number will be sent to a printing factory to be printed at 0.30 Euro per book. It is a paperback and we only pay for the paper. The cost of printing is donated.
From the printing factory the books are transported to a special school in Denmark to be packed for distribution to each school. We do pay for packing but since it is a school the price is low. Before the students pack the books they are invited to IBIS to learn about the campaign. These students often have very bad school experiences and feel a strong solidarity with the children in Southand it gives more meaning to do the packing of books.
By the end of March all books and the teaching support material will be at the schools to be ready for the last Friday before Easter. We will launch The Reading Rocket this Friday to give teachers a chance to use the book before any event in Global Action Week.

Donations to the programme in Mozambique
Over the years learners and teachers have asked IBIS how they can support learners in Southern Africa. Out of this request came the idea of setting up a lottery which students sell in the communities. Not from all classes made use of the opportunity but the 700 schools who did, collected one million Danish Kroner and this money provided 3000 learners in Sierra Leone with a school education. The good stories on how Danish children do make a difference are important for the learners. We have had many responses on the homepage concerning this issue.