BAICE 2010 Student Prize Winner, Kate Jere

BAICE is happy to announce that the STUDENT PRIZE for a paper presented at the BAICE conference East Anglia  2010, was won by Catherine (Kate) Jere for her paper:

“Improving access and retention of vulnerable children in high HIV prevalence communities of Malawi: the potential of open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL)”

Catherine is currently a PhD candidate with the Institute of Education, having been awarded a Bloomsbury Scholarship for research into educational strategies to address barriers to schooling in high HIV prevalence communities in Malawi.  Born in Scotland, Catherine has been resident in Malawi since 1995. She has worked in environmental education, project monitoring and evaluation, and as teacher trainer. Since 2003 she has been employed as a Research Fellow with the University of Malawi, working with the Centre for Educational Research and Training (CERT). She has a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biological Sciences from the University of Edinburgh and a M.Ed. in Education and Development from the University of Bristol.

Following is the abstract of the paper she submitted for the BAICE student prize:

Faced with underlying poverty and an inefficient education system, many children in Malawi have poor access to learning and are at risk of early dropout from formal schooling. It has been argued that in the context of HIV/AIDS, there is a real and pressing need for formal schools to become more inclusive, flexible and responsive to the realities of children’s lives. Introducing a model of education that integrates open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) to support and enrich conventional schooling, this paper highlights the potential of such an approach to enhance learning experiences, bring psychosocial benefits and improve retention of vulnerable pupils in primary schools in high HIV prevalence communities in rural Malawi. This paper also argues that effective innovation requires strategies to create an enabling environment and promote an open and inclusive philosophy within schools.

28 April 2011