Reflective Essay: Educational Equity, Personal Growth, and Impact

This reflective essay delves into the critical topic of educational equity, drawing upon the author's personal experiences during a training period in South Africa. The essay begins with an introduction emphasizing the importance of educational equity and the impact of inequities based on factors like race, socio-economic status, and gender. The main body of the essay describes the author's feelings and observations regarding the lack of access to education, particularly for women and marginalized communities. The author reflects on the challenges faced, including language barriers and cultural differences, while also discussing the learning experiences gained from teaching in a new environment. The essay explores discussions around the need for inclusive education, social perspectives on educational inequity, and ethical considerations. The conclusion summarizes the key points and proposes an action plan to address educational disparities, focusing on the importance of awareness, advocacy, and practical steps towards achieving equity. The essay highlights the significance of education in empowering individuals and fostering societal development, reflecting on the importance of addressing gender and racial biases. Finally, the essay references relevant literature and journals.

Reflective Essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
Description and feeling ..........................................................................................................3
Learning..................................................................................................................................4
Discussion...............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................6
Action Plan.............................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Educational equity is of great importance, the need of which can be observe to be
increase on the basis of premise that level of education if an individual directly associates with
their quality of life. It is important to analyse and understand that an academic system which
tends to practice educational equity is undoubtedly a strong foundation for fair and thriving
society. It is hard to ignore inequity in education because of inequities in race, socio-economic
status, disability and gender. Gender equity in education concerns to equal access of education to
both the genders, male and female without nay partiality. But of the gender bias community can
be seems to stand against women, especially in developing nations. Racial equity in education
refers to admission of students within schools without taking their race into consideration. Racial
equity provide complete opportunity to all the students to participate in all educational programs
without showing any partiality and discrimination with regard of their race. The given report
discuss the major factor of education and its importance for the development if society. The
discussion will cover all the barriers and reflection on the suggested points which describes the
feeling, evaluation, conclusion and action plan need to be taken to make some improvisations to
the present condition.
MAIN BODY
Description and feeling
In my opinion, education is a basic right of every individual. No one should barrier their
children, friends, family to access education in any form and any sense. Through education only
one would be able to read, write , explore and understand things from many perspectives. Lack
of education raise the rate of unemployment within nation and ultimately impacts the economical
status of the country. But I have realised during my training period to South Africa that
accessibility to education is not that easy to gain and understand for many people at different
parts of the world. I have been sent to a village of South Africa during my training days through
my organisation. During my training sessions, I have seen and analysed many things here in the
country that cannot supposed to be done from the society I belonged from. Here I realised that
local people does not prefer their children to access higher education as well as the female
community was not supposed to be allowed to get outside or schools. I was very shocked to see

the culture and mentality of people, especially of those belong to tribal community. I wanted to
know more regarding the issue dedicated to country so I decided to research and found out that
almost 750 million of population in Africa can neither write nor read. UNESCO results showed
that 38% of African population as illiterate and 2/3 portion of them covers women. UNESCO
statistics revealed Africa as the only continent who failed the Millennium Development Goals.
Rate of illiteracy still does not seems to fluctuate down instead it continuously keep on
rising and raised by 30% due to Africa's population explosion. I felt vary bad and disappointed
about the situation of the country and wanted to know about all the factors and aspects that
stimulating such situation and wanted to do something on my level best to lead the people about
importance of education. Apart from education, I wanted them to aware about their bad practices
of gender discrimination and their impacts and legal consequences. I suppose that with proper
access to education the Africans would be able to understand the methods and strategies through
which they can control the increasing birth rate of the country, consequences of wrong traditional
practised of Female Genital Mutilation as well can come together to fight against and cope up
with poverty. I am not the only one who got shocked and numbed by visualising the living
conditions of Africans but I figured out there are many foundations, agencies and national and
local governmental bodies were struggling continuously and trying to find out the ways to
improvise the situations. I feel it important for my professional practice as I see it as my duty to
aware people about importance of education and appeal parents to allow their children to
understand and access their rights.
Learning
I have get to know and learn many things about South African culture and tradition.
Experience on teaching I am gaining from this part is totally different. I have teaching experience
of 12 years from my native place. My experience regarding teaching is sufficient enough to
tackle any sort of student with poor, average and good performance. Being in the profession of
teaching is a passion for me as I always find it excited to teach and guide young children.
Conditions I faced at my new place is really a challenging task for me. At first place, it really
disturb me watching gender inequity for education in state. The classroom has large number of
male students and least number of girls. Even in the organisation, male teaching staff used to
dominate as being in majority. The students I used to deal with does not seems to be very
interested in academic learnings or participate in academic activities. So it was challenging for

me to seek their attention and hold it for very long for any specific chapter. I always preferred to
interact with them after taking lesson classes and try to aware them with their rights they hold,
importance of higher, equality, etc. The students always used to listen to me very carefully and
interestingly when I make them learn and aware about all these things. In teaching profession I
assume it as my duty of providing life knowledge to the students apart from their syllabus
chapters.
By granting exposure to this locality helped me a lot professionally and personally to
sharpen my skills. Facing of different challenges lead me to think critically and adopt for
alternatives in order to make my task easy and successful to get done. It is not possible to not
take into consideration the difficulties I have faced due to language barrier. But I did not wanted
to have language come into my path so I have decided to learn the language. For effective
communication it is important to have access of the most used and comforting language for the
children so they can feel connected with me. My previous teaching experience helped me a lot in
tackling situations here. Once in my classroom there was a physically challenged student used to
dealt with. The students always seems to be sad and isolated. During my initial days I did not
have much idea about how to help him in make him feel good and full of life. But then I have
learnt it from my senior teachers and colleagues and then I approached the student and tries to
talk to him and communicate openly. After sharing all his feelings and emotions used to felt like
someone is there to support and encourage him. Now here also I incident;y got a physically
challenged student. But this time I was aware enough about the strategies to deal with him and
make him feel comfortable and encourage him to move forward in best possible way.
Discussion
Today's society with huge diversity of it's citizens, need to focus strategies and actions on
introducing and blooming inclusive education that offers equal opportunities for all students
regardless of their ethnic, cultural, traditional, socio-economic, gender or any aspect of
background. Educational equity can serve a system to the society in which all common goods are
redistributed and additional resources are provided. Equity in education can be effective enough
to promote good academic results and improve quality, so it is important to promote the sense of
equity amongst people which can allow many students to access higher education and fill the gap
of inequality. The term of Equity in field of education appears in an irregular manner between
the era of 1948 and 2004. From 2005 onwards the term seems to use often and the production if

this scientific term occurs in the English, in the publication area of Education Educational
Research. Equity in assessment refers to educational authorities and practitioners. Issue of equity
commonly consider by educators in terms of accommodations for students with special needs, or
cultural differences. Social perspective behind the issue of educational inequity is the low
mentality of people in many cultures, especially at developing countries. However in recent days
equity is not just a social term but it also connected with many legal and ethical concerns in order
to protect the rights of an individual and even take strict actions against if needed. Ethical
consideration can be highlighted by keeping track on unethical practices should not be done in
schools and organisations. For example, if a school established by a catholic director in an area.
The school cultures and traditions should not seek focus just to catholic practices or catholic
students by ignoring other students belong to different religion.
Conclusion
Action Plan
CONCLUSION

REFERENCES
Books and Journals