Borkena
Toronto – Students in several universities – mainly in the Oromia region of Ethiopia – are protesting a national policy that requires students of one year community service before they graduate.
The Ministry of Education has been preparing to implement it as of the next academic year.
The program was designed for undergraduate students to provide one year of community service after the third year – a year before the final year of their undergraduate program.
The university students have been halting classes to protest the policy since Monday.
Why are students opposing it?
There seem to be layers of reasons for it. For one thing, they think that it is inappropriate to implement it without proper training for teaching. Apparently, the program is mostly a teaching program.
Berhanu Nega, Minister for Education, who appeared at the Ethiopian parliament said salary and benefits paid out to teachers is not adequate and that has contributed to shortage of teachers.
The budgetary problem has contributed to the challenge to train teachers in adequate numbers.
The Ministry says the national program was partly designed to overcome the challenge.
Third year students in many universities say they were not informed via the university administration that they will be offering a one year teaching service.
The condition of peace in some parts of the country is another factor for the students’ opposition for the program. Almost all of the Amhara region of Ethiopia and part of the Oromia regions are conflict zones with active conflicts underway.
There are also students who think that spending one year out of the school environment, as they say, is “inappropriate.” They think they will negatively impact their academic performance upon return from community service.
Others think that it will take the time they need to prepare for the exit exam which the ministry started to administer a few years ago as part of a measure to ensure quality of education.
Unconfirmed reports also seem to indicate that students will finance themselves during the course of the community service which clearly represents a burden for families given the spiraling cost of living. Many families do not seem to afford it at all.
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