Did you know that only 68% of young children in Ghana are developmentally on track? (2020 MICS-EAGLE Ghana Education Fact Sheets). One of the key contributors to poor educational outcomes is a lack of teacher training.

You may remember that we’ve been working closely with Right to Play and Innovations for Poverty Action to develop a teacher training package for the Early Childhood Education Unit of the Ghana Ministry of Education, that can be rolled out nationwide. This will ensure that every teacher across the country can teach children in an effective and inspirational way through play.

Now that the teacher training package is formed, we are moving to explore how best to deliver it across the country. One method is to establish a group of National Master Trainers drawn from the Ghana Education Service across Ghana. This creates a ‘pool’ of highly skilled Master Trainers who can be deployed across the country to deliver the teacher training in their respective districts. We’re pleased to have now trained over 70 National Master Trainers in the national teacher training package!

Inspired by the training we provided, National Master Trainers based in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo- Abirem (KEEA) Municipal District in the Central Region took the initiative and delivered training to over 250 teachers, head teachers and Ghana Education Service officers in their district. Participants were assessed and there was a 30% improvement in understanding of play-based teaching as a result of the training. Participants felt the workshop was really useful and would like to attend more!

Participants described the workshop as fantastic and educative!

KEEA funded and delivered this themselves with some technical input from us, a great example of district ownership of the training. Learning from this will help develop the appropriate delivery methods needed to take this teacher training package nationwide!