Quarterly Report First Quarter – October 1St to December 31St, 2018
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Education for Children and Youth Project Quarterly Report First Quarter – October 1st to December 31st, 2018 Submission Date: January 20th, 2019 Agreement Number: 519-A-13-0000-1 Project Start and End Dates: January 2nd, 2013 to December 31st, 2019 COR: Timothy Curtin Presented by: Fundación para la Educación Integral Salvadoreña (FEDISAL) Avenida Manuel Gallardo. Calle el Boquerón |Santa Tecla, La Libertad Tel: 2523-9800 This document was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development - El Salvador Mission (USAID/El Salvador). 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 1. ¡Error! Marcador no definido. 2. 5 3. 6 4. 6 5. 6 I. 7 II. 8 2.1 8 2.2 12 III. 15 3.1 ¡Error! Marcador no definido. 3.2 ¡Error! Marcador no definido. 3.3 ¡Error! Marcador no definido. 3.4 16 3.5 ¡Error! Marcador no definido. IV. ¡Error! Marcador no definido. V. 18 VI. 19 6.1 19 6.2 21 2 ACRONYMS AGAPE AGAPE Association of El Salvador DDE Departmental Directorate for Education ECYP Education for Children and Youth Project FEDISAL Foundation for Comprehensive Education of El Salvador LPA Learning – Practice – Apply Methodology MINEDUCYT Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology OSY Out-of-School Youth USAID United States Agency for International Development 3 INTRODUCTION The Education for Children and Youth Project (herein “ECYP”) is a bilateral agreement between the Government of El Salvador and the Government of the United States of America. ECYP is part of USAID’s Education Strategy and is implemented by the Foundation for Comprehensive Education of El Salvador (FEDISAL). The project supports the expansion and implementation of the Full-Time Inclusive School approach. ECYP aims to support the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in El Salvador (MINEDUCYT) in its efforts to expand access to education among children and youth living in municipalities with high violence and crime rates in El Salvador. This report presents the achievements and activities that ECYP completed during the first quarter of the USA 2019 fiscal year (FY2019, Q1) within the period from October 1st to December 31st, 2018. 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The homicide rate in El Salvador continues its declining trend that has been observed since 2016. In 2016, the homicide rate went down to 81 per 100,000 inhabitants and in December 2018, this rate decreased to 50 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. In terms of education, MINEDUCYT announced that 15 more municipalities were free of illiteracy. To date, in total 133 municipalities are free of illiteracy. MINEDUCYT officially launched the Salvadorian Educational Management Information System (SIGES). This tool is for managing education data. As of 2019, public schools in El Salvador will apply the new teaching method developed by the Project for Improving Mathematics Learning in Primary and Secondary Education Project (ESMATE) to teach mathematics from the lower primary level to the upper secondary level. The MINEDUCYT has received technical support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in this effort. In regards to the project´s interventions, during the first quarter in 2019, ECYP carried out a series of activities related to its strategic areas as follows: ● Full-time inclusive school approach ● Safe learning environments ● Incentives for low-income students ● Out-of-school youth (OSY) support ● Participation and involvement of other governmental and non-governmental organizations 1. Advocating the Full-Time Inclusive School Approach From October to December 2018, the project assisted 140 school principals and teachers (at the upper primary and lower secondary levels) and 169 pedagogical technical assistants from MINEDUCYT. The activities sought to reinforce teaching, improve academic results of fourth to ninth graders, and to identify students at risk of dropping out. Additionally, ECYP continued to provide orientation on the use of the EDUJOVENES Portal. ECYP identified ways that all involved could effectively use the portal. 2. Improving Safe Learning Environments ECYP continued to improve safe learning environments by providing technical assistance and working with local actors. ECYP also offered relevant support to the already-formed coexistence committees. During this quarter, ECYP inaugurated the “coexistence labs”. The labs will facilitate the planning of youth expression activities while promoting communication and improving interpersonal relationships. 5 Schools are going through the process of designing the plan to prevent school bullying and support bullying victims. Ten sports, art, and culture clubs in Zacatecoluca promoted youth expression to prevent violence. 3. Providing Incentives to Low-Income Students The activity seeks to reduce gaps in access to education for out-of-school young people. The project continued providing scholarships and incentives (transportation and food) to 304 students. The scholarships and incentives allowed students to participate in such training such as job readiness. 4. Supporting Out-of-School Youth (OSY) The activity mainly focuses on promoting greater effectiveness in OSY´s reintegration into the educational system (in terms of access and coverage), retention, and grade completion. ECYP supported 304 OSY through courses related to jobs in waiting tables, bartending, cosmetology, bakery, computer, cellphone repair, and electrical installations. The provided courses fit the OSY training needs and the training areas offered by AGAPE Association of El Salvador (AGAPE). Once there were enough participants for a group, AGAPE offered three possible training areas. Among these three options, AGAPE provided training on the area that the majority of the participants chose. 5. Participation and involvement of other governmental and non-governmental organizations ECYP has supported the mayoralties of Soyapango and Zacatecoluca to coordinate the mentoring strategies. In terms of sustainability, school principals from 72 upper-primary and lower-secondary schools developed basic plans using the early alerts tool to support students identified as at risk of dropout. In addition, FEDISAL´s technical page (https://www.fedisal.org.sv/usaid/guias-apa/) has functioned as a virtual space for teachers to share the learning guides they make and has encouraged teachers to reflect how to improve their teaching based on students´ contexts and needs. From the middle of December 2018 (when the virtual space was created) to the end of January 2019, the technical space had a total of 817 users and 1,219 sessions. At this moment, the cost for the use of this virtual space is free of charge since the space is hosted in FEDISAL´s data center. ECYP anticipates that in March 2019, the virtual space will be migrated to Azure (a cloud computing service created by Microsoft). As a result, there will be a monthly fee per user. 6 School principals, teachers, and pedagogical committees from 15 schools in Zacatecoluca have included ECYP interventions what promote learning and coexistence in their school pedagogical proposals. In 2019, ECYP will support the continuity of the school education proposal and focus on solving pedagogical problems. I. COUNTRY CONTEXT In El Salvador, the homicide rate continues its declining trend. According to data published by the National Civil Police (PNC) 3,340 homicide offences took place from January to December 2018, equivalent to 50 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. According to data published by the School Census, 542,237 upper-primary and lower- secondary students enrolled in schools in 2018. Among these students, 277,785 were upper- primary students (48.3% were female and 51.7% male) and 264,452 were lower-secondary students (48.5% were female and 51.5% male). For both levels, the average repetition rate was 2.9% and the over-age rate was 10.9%. This quarter, MINEDUCYT announced that as a result of the Government´s Literacy Program, the following 15 municipalities became free of illiteracy: San Juan Nonualco, Arcatao, San Luís Talpa, Santiago de la Frontera, Santiago Nonualco, Ayutuxtepeque, Olocuilta, San Francisco Chinameca, San Pedro Perulapán, Ciudad Arce, Meanguera del Golfo, Carolina, San Francisco Menéndez, Guacotecti, and Tacuba. With these new municipalities, the number of municipalities free of illiteracy has increased to 133. Furthermore, as regard to the An Educated El Salvador Plan (Plan El Salvador Educado), MINEDUCYT continued to promote the National Policies on School Coexistence and Peace Culture. The activity focused on school principals and teachers from San Salvador, La Libertad, Chalatenango, and La Paz. This activity complements ECYP interventions focusing on violence prevention and coexistence promotion in schools. In addition, MINEDUCYT officially launched the Salvadorian Educational Management Information System (SIGES). This tool allows monitoring data concerning the national educational system. The system is in its first version which includes features to register all students from elementary to middle schools and features that provides such information as students´ basic profile, attendance reports, grades, and enrollment history. As of 2019, public schools in El Salvador will apply the new teaching method of the Project for Improving Mathematics Learning in Primary and Secondary Education (ESMATE) to teach mathematics from the lower primary level to the upper secondary level. 7 II. ACTIVITY IMPLEMENTATION PROGRESS 2.1 IMPLEMENTION STATUS From October to December 2018, the project accomplished the following