Education and Training in Ethiopia An Evaluation of Approaching EFA Goals

decision makers, teacher educators, teachers and special needs students. The projectcontributed to good governance through capacity building of educational administration.Project EffectivenessThe special education project was based on experiences from and lessons of earlierprojects and on long-term needs analyses. Special education projects have revised theirgoals and nature in response to the feedback that they have received and with a view tomeeting current needs. The aim of the project was to train special education teachers,administrators and researchers, strengthen the organisation of the MoE, and initiateactivities at Addis Abeba University (AAU) with a view to meeting future educational andresearch needs. Particularly, the objectives of the SSEP were to contribute to• enabling the Ministry of Education to be self-reliant in organising andimplementing training of special education personnel;• creating effective co-ordination and cooperation procedures between the ministriesand various NGOs;• including an element of special education to formal and informal education andtraining programmes, with the priority of primary education;• implementing special education in regular schools either in special units or fullyintegrated;• creating an information system for promoting the human rights of the disabled;• making people aware of the nature of disabilities and existing services for thedisabled;• developing the well-being of the disabled by creating and further developing selfemploymentand other income generating models; and• gaining research results for development to special education and in particular thespecial teacher training at all levels.The projects had been successful in terms of gaining the objectives, supporting sustainabledevelopment of the Ethiopian education sector and using the funds allocated to theproject. The major outputs of the project were as follows: 44 new experts (18 MAs and 26Bachelors of Arts (BAs) in special education were trained, the ongoing training of specialneeds education teachers were launched and 115 teachers graduated in 1994-1998,thousands of teachers received in-service training, handouts in different languages and TVand radio programmes informing about disabilities reached a wide audience, and theplanned research on disabilities in the Ethiopian context was conducted. At the end of theproject special needs project seemed to be an integrated part of the education system inEthiopia.Project EfficiencyThe planning and preparation phases of each special education projects have been long.The nature and extent of the projects have also been changed from the original plans as itoccurred before SSEP / Training in Finland began. For the first project (1989-1992), theproject document had to be changed a lot. The second project, SSEP 1994-1998, theoriginal project document served well as a guide of activities as the objectives wererealistic. The results of the external midterm review offered the feedback of managing theproject and were accordingly considered.76