Partners

Educational Partners

Integral to Sabre’s Brighter Futures Programme is our close partnership with the Ghana Education Service. This is key to the sustainability of our programmes, and has always been a defining feature of Sabre’s approach. We build schools with the District Assemblies, for the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, and we train teachers on the government payroll and student teachers coming through the further education system. The core of our approach is based on collaboration and responding to need, we are not setting up parallel systems, but working hard to enhance the existing ones.

In 2011, with support from the UK Department for International Development and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, we embarked on a thorough review of all kindergarten activity in Ghana, taking into account international best practice, in order to develop a strategy and operational plan for scaling up quality kindergarten education nationwide.

Along with the other national and international experts, Dominic (Sabre’s Chief Executive Officer) and Nick (Sabre’s Programme Manager at the time) played a vital role in helping us to develop our strategy for improving kindergarten services.

Now that we have a final approved Operational Plan to scale up quality kindergarten education in Ghana. In the last eight months I have closely followed the work that Sabre has been undertaking in collaboration with my colleagues in the Central Region, and am delighted to see the concepts included in the plan being turned to reality through the Transformational Teacher Training pilot.”
Margaret Okai, National Coordinator for Early Childhood Education, Ghana Education Service

“The transformational teacher training programme initiated by Sabre Trust came at just the right time for us, with the College recently beginning an Early Childhood development education programme. Stakeholders including the children are already feeling the positive impact of the programme. It is helping us to improve pre-school education delivery in a number of ways and bringing quality to what is being offered for early childhood education. Previously, our system of training early childhood educators was too content oriented, using the same approach as was used to train primary school teachers.

Beyond the trainee teachers it must also be noted that the programme has impacted positively on the Ghanaian education system as a whole. The different group activities and the engagement of children in class as major participants of their own learning are contributing to making school more interesting and enjoyable for the children. This has resulted in significant increases in school enrolment at the pre-school level.

Challenges remain in terms of engaging parents and enhancing the indoor and outdoor classroom environments, but overall this has been a really positive programme and we look forward to its expansion next year.”

Sister Elizabeth Amoako, Principal, Our Lady of Apostles College of Education

“Holy Child College of Education is privileged to be part of Sabre Trust. Through the numerous meetings and workshops with the Sabre team, the tutors have learnt modern methods of teaching. The partnership has also imparted positively on their lesson delivery in the classroom. This in turn is making a great difference in the learning process.

There is no doubt that Sabre Trust training will help to produce a new calibre of Early Childhood professionals who will help build a solid foundation for our children in the kindergarten.”

Margaret Lemaire, Principal, Holy Child College of Education

Sabre’s small fundraising team in the UK works incredibly hard to secure the funding needed to deliver the Brighter Futures programme and we feel very fortunate to have been invited to reapply to a number of partners who have previously supported our projects. This is a very positive endorsement of Sabre’s ability to deliver projects, and gives us greater confidence as we make our forward plans.