Our intrepid Western Region, Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) team, comprising Emmanuel, Felix and Kaizer, have been talking recently to 290 parents / guardians in eight Transformational Teacher Training project schools to find out their views on what a quality kindergarten education looks like. Emmanuel, Felix and Kaizer have done this through meeting the parents when they assembled for Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meetings and asking them to share what, for them, are the main criteria for successful kindergarten education.

The eight main criteria parents came up with were: good teachers, good parental support, their children speaking good English, availability of appropriate teaching and learning materials, good relations between parents and teachers, good health care provision, homework given and schools having playgrounds.

In the next few weeks, the MEL team are going to visit hundreds more parents, by going to all 24 project schools to talk to parents again. This time they are going to measure how satisfied parents are in each of the schools in relation to the eight criteria.

It will be interesting to find out if and how parents’ views change as our project progresses.

Stay tuned for updates.