Accreditation and Training of Teacher Assistants in Bhutanese Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Accreditation and Training of Teacher Assistants in Bhutanese Schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Capacity Building in higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics:

Project Summary

Including children with special educational needs (SEN) in Bhutanese regular classroom is a recent concept. With much awareness and initiatives for the inclusion of children with SEN in mainstream schools by government agencies, local civil society organizations and international organizations, there has been increase in the enrollment of children with SEN in schools every year. But given the limited professional support in the classroom and resource constraints, supporting children with SEN has been a major challenge. Studies have claimed that Bhutanese classrooms with large size (40 to 45 students in a classroom) handled by a single SEN teacher who do not have formal qualification of teaching children with SEN has posed a serious challenge in supporting the needs of the children with SEN. Further, this situation is worsened by the fact that Bhutanese classrooms do not have teacher assistants to support the children and SEN teachers. Therefore, it is asserted that the provision of teacher assistants to assist students with SEN in schools would ease the burden of under resourced teachers. In addition, the need for teacher assistants has been emphasized in Bhutan’s Standard for SEN (2017), National Policy for Persons with Disabilities (2019) and other national policies alike. With these national issues and policy expectations the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) has proposed this project in developing and implementing the first ever National Diploma programme in Teacher Assistant. This project will have implications for RUB in terms of capacity building, best practices, and industrial linkages with EU HEIs. It is also expected that with the implementation of this project, children with SEN and their parents in Bhutan are benefited, and provide employment opportunities to Bhutanese youths. All in all, this project is expected to address in attaining the the long term SDGs and the aspirations of developmental philosophy of Gross National Happiness.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 504700 Eur

Project Coordinator

ROYAL UNIVERSITY OF BHUTAN & Country: BT

Project Partners

• ROEHAMPTON UNIVERSITY LBG
• STIFTUNG EVALUATIONSAGENTUR BADEN-WUERTTEMBERG
• UC LEUVEN