German Church School, Addis Ababa

Dear friends of GCS,

We would like to convey our greetings across you all on behalf of the children and staff of GCS.

It is a real blessing for us to get very close to the end of our academic year 2002/03 (1995 E.C.) and report on the various activities of GCS. This report will cover in a nutshell activities in the Regular Program, the Saturday Tutorial Support, the Integrated Education for the Blind, the Evening Program, the Fosterships and other services that the school has been rendering.

At this very time 1107 children and youngsters are getting educational and /or fostership support through GCS.

1.The Regular Program: This program is run in two shifts, morning and afternoon. The first /morning/ shift is for students in grade 4,5,6,7 and 8, while the second /afternoon/ shift is for the children in grade 1, 2 and 3.

In GCS, we currently have 600 students in this program of which 331 are girls and 269 are boys. This figure shows that 55.2% of the children in this program are girls. The distribution of students in this program is depicted clearly in the table below this.

As shown in the table, all grades have two sections except grade 1,6 and 8 and this makes an average class student ratio 1:46.

We have 20 teachers in the regular program and most of them teach in the evening program as well as the Saturday program. The subjects taught in the regular program include Amharic, English, Mathematics, Social studies(Geography and History) Science, (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) Art, Handicraft, Physical Education, Ethics and Hygiene. So much has been done to improve the quality of the services that GCS gives to the students, by giving guidance and training to teachers, class supervision, encouraging them to support their lessons by using teaching aids whenever necessary. Towards this effect,

• The school pedagogical center has been furnished more by educational teaching aids prepared by students and teachers,
• The science laboratory has been furnished by more equipment most of which was bought in Germany through the effort of Mrs Ursel Stahlmann.
• The existing departments and committees constituted in the school have been instrumental in planning and implementing experience sharing visits to other similar schools, educational visits to factories, museums, zoos, etc.. so as to enrich the learning process.
• The existing clubs like the Mini-media, anti HIV/AIDS club and the Disabled club have done a lot of awareness creation and extra-curricular support in their respective areas of focus.

1. Integrated Education: It is the inclusion of this program that makes GCS different from many other schools in the city. Integrated education for the blind became functional in GCS eleven years ago and we now have 34 students in this unit of the school of these, 21 are in the regular program, 7 in the Saturday Tutorial 3 in Diploma level training in college and 3 of them are in Addis Ababa University. The Visually Impaired students in the secondary level also are getting the necessary tutorial support by the help of the teachers.

As an integral part of the effort that we are making to improve the academic support that is given to students in the unit,

• 50 text books have been transcribed into Braille.
• 20 old Braille books have been renewed .
• Visited the home of every child in the resource room and we are responding to the problems that we identified during the visits.
• Held discussion with parents and guardians of the students on how we can closely work together to alleviate the problems of the students.

• Resource students have been taken for the annual retreat program to Woliso.
• Members of the disabled club, (70 students and 3 teachers) were also in Sebeta School for the blind for a day for an experience sharing visit.

1.2 National Examination: This is the primary level-second cycle or grade 8 national examination. Students of grade 8 in GCS- sat for this examination for the fourth time, i.e. after the grade level has been raised and we always are having a 100% pass with very good results.

Similarly out of the 45 students (17 girls and 28 boys) that took this exam, 60% of them, obtained 90 and above and the rest were within 83.6-89.

2.The Evening Unit: This unit serves adults whose age range is between 16 – 44. Most of the students in this unit are daily labourers, house maids, guards, bar ladies and clergymen. There are totally 202 youngsters and adults in this program and over 25%of them are parents of children in GCS.

The distribution of these students is also shown in the following table.

Grade	Female	Male	Total
4	29	19	48
5	21	38	59
6	25	31	56
7	18	21	39
Total	93	109	202
%	46.0	54.0	100

Table 2 - distribution of students in the evening unit by grade and sex.

3. The Saturday Program: We through this program are giving tutorial support to our students that are in different government secondary schools. This tutorial support is run in two shifts, morning and afternoon, and we also have additional computer class arrangement on other week days for grade 8,10 and 12.

Ten new computer were bought at the beginning of the academic year for this purpose and the old ones were distributed to each department so as to help teachers familiarize themselves more with computers.

At present we have 263 students in this program and this is shown in the following table.

Grade	F	M	T
10+2	19	18	37
10+1	35	28	63
10	29	22	51
9	51	29	80
8	4	10	14
7	9	9	18
Total	147	116	263
%	55.9	44.1	100

According to the policy of education effected in the country we have two groups of students in the second cycle of secondary education i.e. students in the Preparatory Program and those in the Vocational Stream. In this case, we have 22 girls and 26 boys in the preparatory program and 32 girls and 20 boys in the Vocational Stream. The training at this level is meant to enable students to choose subjects or areas of training which will prepare them for higher education and for the world of work.

4. Fostership: Children in the school are always placed with one of the fostership programs we have. During the current part of the School year we have 251 students with kindernothilfe (KNH), 295 with German Church Fostership (GCF) and 213 children are fostered by Interpedia.

4.1. Extended fostership: This is a fostership support for our students that join higher institutions and vocational Training institutes.

In the mean time we have 17 students in different vocational training institutes who are pursuing their studies in Auto Mechanics, General Mechanics, Wood work,Metal work, electricity and electronics. Six of these are female trainees. Like wise 26 students graduated from different institutes in the course of the year as shown below.

Table 4 - Distribution of graduates by sex and institution.

On the other hand GCS, supports 23 other students who are pursuing their studies in colleges and universities in Addis Ababa and other regional towns.

We are glad to inform you here with that six of these are visually impaired children that have been in the GCS integrated education for the blind, and hope the younger children will also follow their footsteps.

5. Other Services: Due the very underlying reason that all children come from very destitute family background, on top of the monthly pocket-money that the students get, we provide them with bread and fruits on school days, milk, uniform clothes, and a pair of shoes as well as free medical support.

The fostership support that is given to students and trainees in vocational training institutes and colleges rises with the increase in tuition fee, transportation expense, purchase of reference materials and equipments especially for students in vocational stream.

In addition to this regular home visits are paid to homes of children that perform poorly because of economic or other family based problems. We are trying to respond to such problems by counseling the children and their parents or guardians or by giving financial or material support as the need is felt.

On top of the already existing economic problems the children have a very close look into the family situation has shown that almost 31%.(186) of families of students in the regular program are female headed, and 8% are orphan. This figure will definitely keep on rising in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS which is more so among poor family members.

Constraints: We had a tough and unusual experience with the death of a girl who was in grade 8, and a ten years old child of grade 3. The girl was suffering from heart problem and pneumonia and the boy ( an orphan) also had pneumonia. Both of them were under medical care in the school clinic and hospital.

One of the best teachers we have also got health problem and we are making-up for that by part-time teachers.

Thanks: We on behalf of the children in GCS are indebted and so much grateful to you all and organizations like KNH, Interpedia, CBM and all others that have been supporting the activities in the school and to help alleviate most of the problems these children would have other wise faced.

We are exclusively thankful to respective fosterparents of individual child in GCS whose continued support and initiation made the activity of the school possible.

Respectfully presented,