About the Project
This project is one of the 2020 WISE Awards finalists.
The project targets the shortage of trained teachers and the lack of quality, specialist student teacher training. Practicing teachers receive a year of training to break away from the rote-based methodology to the government endorsed child-centered, play-based pedagogy. The training takes a thematic approach with early grade literacy, numeracy and creativity integrated into classroom activities.
Context and Issue
Ghana achieved a Gross Enrolment Rate of 99.4% by July 2012, however equivalent gains were not made in the quality of the education. Whilst 85% of kindergarten teachers are trained, the vast majority have had no specialist training for kindergarten. The kindergarten teaching profession suffers from stigmatization, portraying kindergarten teachers as the least skilled and the early years as the least important.
Solution and Impact
The project targets the shortage of trained teachers and the lack of quality, specialist student teacher training. Practicing teachers receive a year of training to break away from the rote-based methodology to the government endorsed child-centered, play-based pedagogy. The training takes a thematic approach with early grade literacy, numeracy and creativity integrated into classroom activities.
Districts in the vicinity of Colleges of Education have a network of classrooms that receive additional training for teachers to become mentors to student teachers, who will spend time in these classrooms during their Bachelor of Education, enabling student teachers to enact the pedagogy independently as Newly Qualified Teachers.
Head teachers and Ghana Education Service officers are trained alongside teachers to understand the pedagogy and to fulfil their duties in monitoring and maintaining quality classroom practice after the project has finished.
550 teachers have been trained, enabling 72,912 children to experience a high-quality education. An Innovations for Poverty Action impact evaluation demonstrated that the training was successful in improving children’s pre-literacy and numeracy and social- emotional skills with sustained gains persisting into primary. A randomised control trial also showed that the project significantly improved student teachers implementation and knowledge of the curriculum.
Future developments
In the future, this project aims to scale up whilst continuing to support the government in curriculum design, monitoring, cost effective rollout and implementation. It also aim to digitise our training content for ease of sharing and replication within Ghana and beyond.