By Courtney
Irwin
22nd
April 2012
UK
based charity Tzedek has joined with School for Life to develop a new program
aimed at improving the quality of education in Northern
Ghana.
Tzedek is
the Jewish community’s international development charity. Having worked in Northern
Ghana for a number of years, the organisation has sought to deepen
their ties with the region, and to develop innovative solutions aimed at eliminating
poverty in the country.
EQUIP is a recent
program developed in collaboration with School for Life (SfL). The project aims to improve the quality of
education in schools in Northern Ghana through
training of education stakeholders in child centred methodologies, and through the
provision of teaching and learning materials including classroom charts, flash
cards, and textbooks.
The program
was devised in response to an extensive year long investigation into the causes
of poverty in Northern Ghana, which identified
quality education as a major barrier to improvements in the country. School for Life became involved in the
initiative when Tzedek sought to engage local organisations with specialities in
education and designed a pilot project which Tzedek agreed to fund.
The EQUIP
program has just completed this one year pilot, focusing on twenty schools in
the Saboba and Chereponi districts. District
Teacher Support Team trainers, from Ghana Education Services, responsible for
delivering in-service training to school teachers, were engaged by EQUIP to
deliver the program to P1 and P3 teachers in formal schools. The schools were then provided with training
and learning materials to support the use of the methods in the classroom. In addition to this, training was provided to
Head teachers, Circuit Supervisors, School Management Committees, and Parent Teacher
Associations to raise awareness and support for the program, and to promote
understanding of roles and responsibilities.
Recently,
staff members from Tzedek head office in London,
Hirsh Cashdan and Umo Young were in the country to evaluate the pilot and to
develop plans to extend the program. The
evaluation showed that the pilot has delivered impressive results to date. Interviews and focus groups conducted have revealed
that all the stakeholders involved are in agreement about the success of the
program. Parents and teachers continually
note that their children are learning better, faster, and demonstrating greater
capability. Teachers are teaching
better, and the supervision has improved.
Head Masters say the program has improved the management of
schools. Children themselves can see the
benefits of the teaching and learning materials and say it helps them to
understand easier. “We can see it with
our eyes” say the children “we can touch and practise with the materials”. In addition to this, they note that they
learn faster now that they are encouraged to ask questions in class. Tests were conducted earlier in the pilot in
10 of the participant schools and 4 control schools in literacy and numeracy
and the same tests conducted at the end of the pilot showed that the
participant school children had, on average, gained 8 percentage points more
than the equivalent control school children
Tzedek
staff commented that one of the surprising findings of the evaluation was the
effectiveness of a quiz competition organised between schools who had received
the intervention. Individuals selected
by the school competed against each other in reading, spelling and the
identification of images. School
champions then competed against other schools at the district level. The teachers reported that the quiz
competition had been very effective in engaging students, and that selection to
participate in the quiz had been a motivating factor in improved classroom
participation.
Plans are
now in place to scale up the program over the next three years. An additional nine districts and over 400
schools will be added to the program during this time, beginning with Tolon,
Savelugo and Kumbungu districts. The program
will also be extended to train P2 teachers.
The full implementation will be funded by Tzedek supported itself by a
large grant from UK
based charity, Comic Relief.
The SfL EQUIP Team(from
left to right): Bishe Jospeh Ubakoni (District Coordinator), Abukari Kadiri
(District Coordinator), Yakambu Muniru Kalamba (District Coordinator), Umo
Young (Tzedek Staff), Karimu A Mohammed (SfL Project Manager), Suleman Osman
Saaka (SfL Programme Manager), Hirsg Cashdan (Tzedek Staff)
