The Instituto Catholico Para Formacao De Professores (ICFP), Timor-Leste welcomes the ratification of a 4th year to their program after 3 years lobbying.
After 3 years of lobbying, the Institute has been given permission by the Ministry of Education, Timor-Leste, to begin a fourth year of formation, giving students the equivalent of a Bachelor of Education that is given to graduating teachers in Australia. This course will be offered to past graduates to begin with, and will consist of specialist teaching units for Mathematics, Science, English or Portuguese, a research methods unit and an action research project as well as a 3-month internship at the school where they are currently employed or a school where they can volunteer to teach during this time. They will complete the action research project during the three months they are on internship.
ICFP is hoping to commence the course as soon as the program particulars are finalised. Past graduates have been asking for this 4th Year for a long time, and so the frameworks need to be refined before it is offered. Staff are already working on the units they will be teaching.
When they finish the 4th year, graduates will be qualified to teach in schools from Year 1 to Year 9, though even now they sometimes find themselves teaching senior secondary school because there are not enough teachers with formal qualifications. This is particularly true for the more remote areas of Timor-Leste where a number of ICFP graduates are working.
Brother Peter Corr fms wished to “express gratitude and appreciation for the generosity ICFP’s partners have made to support the Institute, and as a result, the development of quality education for the schools of Timor-Leste. Good teachers make a difference to the lives of their students, families and society.”