UNESCO in collaboration with the Tanzania Institute of Education has been organizing a series of interventions since 2019 to help improve teachers’ attitudes, knowledge and skills in teaching Life skills-based SRH, HIV and Gender Based Violence (GBV) including bullying prevention education. So far UNESCO has reached more than 21,000 in-service teachers with good-quality Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) teaching materials. However, the reach is only 6.8% of the total no. of in-service teachers in the country (307,254 BEST 2021).
In a view of trying a new approach to address the issue of having fewer teachers with the required competence of teaching CSE, by creating a synergy between basic education and Tertiary Institutions, UNESCO through O3 and O3 Plus projects partnered with the Tanzania Institute of Education to introduce a pre-service package that aimed to reach the “grassroots” of where Teachers are being nurtured.
Recently, jointly with the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE), UNESCO allied with the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE) to reach over 200 pre-service teachers on how to deliver good quality, culturally appropriate Life skills-based SRH, HIV, and GBV including bullying prevention education.
“This is a good opportunity for student-teachers to graduate with adequate knowledge on CSE and become more knowledgeable on how to access CSE relevant content that will support their future teaching career”- Jennifer Kotta, ANPO UNESCO
“Sometimes parents in our cultural context may hesitate to speak about CSE issues with their children, but a Teacher with the required appropriate knowledge is capable to educate the children, hence to educate a Teacher is to educate a nation” - Dr. Mabula Nkuba, DUCE
During this forum, student-teachers had an opportunity to practically register for TIE Learning Management System and had access to both CSE and Connect with Respect learning content. Going forward, UNESCO is planning to take this initiative to all teachers’ colleges that are covered by the O3 Plus project.
“I appreciate UNESCO’s support to bring TIE here, the knowledge will help us in our studies and as a last-year student I can’t wait to practically start use this knowledge in my teaching career” – Maduhu John, Student teacher
“I am happy to have learned that teaching Sexual Reproductive health content needs to be age-appropriate”- Nancy Rogers, Student teacher
“I am glad I now understand how to access the content through TIE LMS, I look forward to sharing this knowledge with students in rural areas”- Wende Mhidze, student teacher