Our Transformational Teacher Training team had a great visit to the schools on our one year In-Service Teacher Training programme (INSET) at the end of May. The team visited to observe how the teachers were getting on implementing their learning from the Intensive Training Workshop they attend at the start of the term. After observing the teachers the team were able to offer coaching and support to resolve any challenges they were facing.

The team was very impressed by the classroom decorations, full of various teaching and learning materials, creating a print rich environment. All the recommended Learning Centres had been well created and had plenty of resources in them for the children to use. The Learning Centres include a Home Centre, Construction Centre and Market Centre, which help to create an engaging environment with teachers playing a role as facilitator as pupils learn through play. We were delighted to see that the teachers were also making good use of all of the story books they have been provided. These books have been carefully selected to fit in with the different themes that are introduced throughout the terms, but also making sure that they are Ghana appropriate and stories that the children can relate to.

The Pupil Achievement Record, which is used to monitor children’s progress, had been completed appropriately every week by the teachers. This was very encouraging to see as this is an area of the programme that many teachers find challenging.

The teachers shared that the phonics session has been one of the easiest aspects of the programme for them to implement. The children love these sessions and the teachers can see how effective the phonics programme is in helping them with their literacy skills and reading.

Teachers had the opportunity to share their challenges which included setting up the Clinic and Palace Centre for the theme ‘Handa’s Surprise’ and ‘Traditional Tale’ respectively. Teachers also discussed the challenge of having underage and overage pupils in the classroom, which is making the implementation of the programme more difficult for them. This is a challenge that is present in a large majority of classrooms on the programme, solutions for this were discussed with the teachers and actions put into place.