Introduction

History and Goals

Education has a long history in Ethiopia. Formal education has long been given in churches, monasteries and mosques since the 4th and 6th centuries respectively. One major reason could be that Ethiopia is the only sub-Saharan African country that has long possessed its own alphabets. Tutors as well as the educated children of the nobility went door to door to teach. The introduction of formal education in the modern sense however does not go beyond a hundred years. It started with the opening of diplomatic relations with European nations at the start of the 19th century when foreigners came to the country as advisors to the rulers.

The development of education has registered an amazing scope and magnitude especially within the last sixty-six years. Many schools and higher institutions of learning have been opened all over the country enabling millions of Ethiopians to take part in this virtuous aspect of modern civilization.

Educating a population takes and demands a lot of resources. In a developing country where population explosion is uncontrollable, it has become very difficult to find vacancies in schools for every school age child. The number of schools built and teacher training-facilities are not sufficient to satisfy the insatiable demand.

The struggle to absorb more children to schools and employ more teachers has brought about a severe problem of overcrowding. It is not unusual to see over 100 students in an average classroom. These classrooms are difficult to be managed by a single teacher. Textbooks and other facilities are equally insufficient. These problems have led to a serious deterioration in the quality of education. Today, the government of Ethiopia is waging a twofold battle in the field of education – firstly increasing the enrolment rate and secondly improving the quality of education.

Due to these problems in the field of education, the private and non-profit sectors have recently started playing an important role. Educational institutions at different levels have been opened up all over the country. They recruit better teachers from the available market and they have relatively smaller class sizes enabling them to give a better quality of education.

As trained educators themselves, growing problems of access and poor quality in education are what swayed the founders of Almikas to venture into opening a Kindergarten and Primary in the small town of Sendafa, forty kilometers north-east of the capital, Addis Ababa.

Introduction
Background
Vision for School
School Objectives