By Mariam Williams
Education For All Campaign Network (EFANet) The Gambia with grant support from the Education Out Loud (EOL), joined by stakeholders in education, recently reviewed the Education Policy documents at a workshop convened at NACCUG office in Bakau.
As part of their vision, EFANet aims to achieve the realization of quality education for all in the Gambia by 2030, and transforming the network into a strong education lobby group.
Its mission is to build an informed and skilled network of civil society organisations to achieve a coordinated and credible advocacy for the right of all to quality education by 2030, as indicated by officials.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE), Mr. Louis Moses Mendy, speaking at the ceremony, expressed his happiness that there are more females in Efanet than males, acknowledging they are helping to make his works easier for him, and are also campaigning on his behalf that “everyone should be educated”-which should be his (PS’) work.
The Ministry’s Number 2 further indicated to his audience that the school going children in all parts of the country are important to him, charging that everyone one of them has the right to education since they are all Gambians.
PS Mendy also shows his appreciation to EFANet for including Sign Language Interpreters in the programme, as he re-echoed that his own perspective of education is that “everyone has the right to education”; and “education is a fundamental right for everyone”.
The National Coordinator of EFANet, Mr. Kebba Jarjusey, informed the participants that with grant funding support from the EOL, they organized a retreat with stakeholders in education to review the component of the Education Sector Policy 2016-2030 that focused on quality education and its sub-themes identified some of the gaps of the Education policy and programmes and come up with suggested recommendations to address them.
“The EOL grant funding, which is Global partnership for Education fund for advocacy and social accountability, supports civil society to be active and influential in shaping education policy to better meet the needs of the communities, especially the vulnerable and marginalised populations.
“EOL also aims to enhance civil society capabilities to engage in Education sector planning, policy, dialogue, monitoring and to promote transparency and accountability [in the] national education policy sector,” Jarjusey explained to the workshop.
Mr. Bakary Badjie, Board Chairperson of EFANet, said the reason for their coming together was to review the component of the Gambia’s education sector and to identify some of the gaps [therein]. He opined the gathering couldn’t come at a better time than now when socioeconomic activities, including teaching and learning globally, have being hampered by the unprecedented devastating impact of Covid-19.
“The two days stakeholders’ engagement is therefore expected to also consider the planning and management of the disaster risk reduction on education, before, during and after emergency,” he pointed out.
The Board chief believed they could now begin to make stock of how much they have achieved in early implementation of SDG-4 [Sustainable Development Goal 4–It aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all] as well the incorporation of SDGs into the National Development Plan [Barrow government’s development blue-print], and it’s undertaken gap analysis to promote policy coherence.
