ZS973H07 Year 7 pupils with letters ZS974H07 A teacher from Sir William Romney's School in Tetbury, Nigel Bass, recently visited Ethiopia in his role as International Co-ordinator. Mr Bass visited Yeka Primary School and The Kokokbetsibah Secondary School in Addis Ababa Here he gives us an account of his trip.

ON arrival in Addis late at night my first impressions of the city were of extreme poverty.

The drive to the hotel along the Bole road showed literally hundreds of people sleeping rough on the streets and prostitutes plying their trade.

The first day was spent acclimatising to the environment of one of the poorest countries in the world. UN statistics place Ethiopia 153 out of 160 countries in the world, only just above a number of other countries in sub- Saharan Africa.

According to the Ethiopian Governments own statistics, about 80 percent of the Ethiopian capital is slum dwelling with only about 20 percent of residents having access to mains sewerage.

The Kokobetsibah secondary school is situated in the North Eastern fringes of Addis Ababa.

The school has about 4,500 pupils and has two shifts per day. Half the pupils attend the morning shift, the other half in the afternoon.

All lessons are meant to take place in English.

Class sizes vary from around 55 to 65 pupils per class. Classrooms have electricity, desks and chairs but very little else.

Some classrooms have plasma screens, which broadcast programmes in English from South Africa.

Although this sounds fairly high-tech, the programmes cannot be paused and the signal often breaks up with interference, which makes the programmes difficult to follow even for me, a native English speaker.

Ages in the two year groups vary from 13 to about 21.

Because of dire poverty many pupils have to interrupt their education to work.

One pupil Frea, a 19-year-old girl, didn't attend class for two years, as she had to work on a building site to make ends meet.

Many other pupils fail the year and have to repeat it. As most pupils live in slum dwellings conditions are often overcrowded and cramped and it makes it very difficult for pupils to focus on homework.

Only just over 40 percent of children reach the secondary school however about 80 percent of pupils start in primary education.

The Yeka primary school is situated about a 20 minute walk away from Kokebetsibah.

Pupils have to pay a monthly fee of 25 birr to attend which is just under £1.50. Primary schools attract significantly less funding than secondary schools.

As in the secondary school, pupils ages can vary enormously within classes. Some sixteen year old pupils may be in the same class as an eleven year olds.

On one of the days I attended the primary school, end of month tests were taking place.

The head teacher Tesfaye Gebreselassie had not permitted four teenage boys, agedabout 13 - 14 years old, to take the tests because of poor attendance.

The reasons the boys gave for not attending class were that they had to work to help support their families.

One worked in a minibus taxi collecting fares and the other cleaning shoes on the street. One can see how the drop out rate between primary and secondary school is nearly 40 percent.

Rather than this visit being a one off trip to raise awareness in school of issues in developing countries, Sir William Romney's wants to take the link further.

Both Kokebetsibah and Yeka have agreed with us to work on joint projects on the local environment. Pupils in our respective schools will work on project folders looking at buildings, transport issues, local environmental issues and local community issues as well as HIV and Aids.

It is our sincere hope that this collaborative work between our schools will allow us to be successful in applying for a Dfid (Department for International Development) School Partnership grant.

If our application at the beginning of May is successful it would allow Sir William Romney's to host an Ethiopian teacher in September or October 2007 at the beginning of the new academic Year.

SWR would like to be able to finance a second teacher from Kokebetsibah to come to Tetbury.