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| Young Alusine Barrie leading teacher training on positive behaviour management |
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| Science teachers gathered for active learning training |
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| Deputy Director of Education for Port Loko District addresses assembled principals from partner schools |
EducAid is approached regularly with requests to start more and more schools across the country but funding and even managing them is not within our reach at the moment. Instead, we started an outreach programme supporting the improvement of teaching and learning in schools that already exist. There are so many that have teachers who have barely, if at all, finished their own secondary education and become the most efficient blockage to children’s progress it is possible to imagine.
This outreach programme has whole staff training components on positive behaviour management (that’s right – no canes!), accurate subject content and teaching skills and is delivered by EducAid staff.
Some schools are absolutely lapping it up and are so excited to be improving and seeing their students starting to have a hope of passing the public exams. Some are lethargic and indifferent to their pupils’ plight at their hands.
The Deputy Director has recently started getting more involved in the programme and is insisting that every school should participate and that he personally will ensure that all participating schools fully cooperate. This, in our experience, is unusual behaviour for a government official so we wanted to know why. He explained how he has been going round community schools to shut them down because the quality is so poor. On one occasion, however, he arrived at the John Buya Foundation School, ready to do just that and found the standard of teaching and the ways the teachers were organising their classes to be so out of the ordinary that he started to probe. When he found out that they credited their abilities to their participation in the EducAid Quality Enhancement Programme, we gained a new friend. He is delighted. The school stayed open and a bunch more young Sierra Leoneans are gaining an improved education.
We are greatly appreciative of his support and look forward to collaborating more and more. We have meetings with him on Saturday to discuss EducAid training his inspectors and supervisors whose skills he realises are lacking. What a fantastic opportunity to have a real impact on how Port Loko District youngsters learn. On and Up!!!
If you are interested in knowing more about EducAid’s work with vulnerable young Sierra Leoneans, please go to www.educaid.org.uk and www.sierraleonegirls@blogspot.com