Teacher Training Centre: -
“If you educate a woman, you educate a whole family”
The aim of the teacher training centre is to provide groups of young women from villages through out the Okara District with sufficient basic teaching skills to return to their village and set up small primary level schools.
T.T.C. was started initially to run teacher training courses for AKRA teachers, and later to extend school e ducation primarily for girls into villages around Shergarh. Throughout rural Punjab, girls are under-represented in schools, and we aim to help redress the balance.
T.T.C is staffed by experienced primary teachers, advised and trained by U.K. instructors. They have run training courses for the primary and secondary teachers in the Shergarh School and for the teachers in the village schools already established. To start the schools AKRA provides teacher training as well as professional support, basic furniture needs, a management structure and credibility combined with experience.
Working on the Philosophy “If you educate a woman, you educate a whole family,” we plan to set up Mosque schools in areas where girls are not adequately served by the present education system. The education of women is basically an investment in the education of their children and indeed their grand children.
To open and maintain good quality schools we need the support, involvement, cooperation and enthusiasm of the village communities. They will be their schools, teaching their children, for the benefit of their communities.
The schools are opened with two classes, adding a new class each year. The teachers are selected from the villages, and trained by experienced, and qualified instructors at the T.T.C. in Shergarh. All schools are Urdu medium, with a syllabus designed to teach literacy, numeracy, health and environmental understanding, as well as Urdu and Islamic studies and some English. The syllabus is based around the existing Punjab Education Board guidelines.
Village committees have been established for the effective management of the schools, in coopertion with AKRA and its instructors. The committees consist of respected men and women from the villages and are responsible for the day-to-day running of the schools.
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