The first Western Region Programme Management Meeting of this academic year was held at Holy Child College of Education. The Principal of the College, Mrs Margaret Lemaire, opened the event and welcomed all the attendees.  As well as Mrs Lemaire, the College was represented by two staff members; the regional education office was represented by four staff members, including the Public Relations Officer, Mr Okai-Boafo; Sekondi-Takoradi Metro education office was represented by seven staff members, including one of the Deputy Directors, Mr Osbert Forson; Shama District education office was represented by six staff members, including the Director, Mr Charles Ngumah; and Sabre Charitable Trust was represented by four staff members, including the Managing Director, Mr Dominic Bond.

The meeting began by attendees working in groups to discuss what they think are the benefits of the project to different groups of beneficiaries, namely children, teachers and head teachers, college tutors and student teachers and Ghana Education Service officers. One example, out of many, of the former is ‘Children become conscious of/responsible for their own learning’.  One example of the benefits of the project to teachers and head teachers is that ‘Head teachers have in-depth knowledge of what teachers do in the classroom’. One example of the benefits to college tutors and student teachers is that ‘College tutors now relate better with student teachers’ and an example of the benefits to Ghana Education Service officers is that ‘the officers perform the role of a critical friend rather than of pursuing their subordinates’ in the Fast-track Transformational Teacher Training project.

The attendees showed great interest in the first term’s progress report and had many questions and comments, especially about the monitoring, evaluation and learning data presented in the report. There was also a good deal of discussion around some of the agenda items, such as the challenge of kindergarten classes having under and over-age children in them. Ghana Education Service officers committed themselves to doing their best to reduce the number of inappropriate-aged children in KG classes in the 2016/17 academic year. Another commitment was to try to post two teachers to Fast-track Transformational Teacher Training classrooms in the next academic year, so as to help the project to be carried out as effectively as possible.

This first Programme Management Meeting was very successful and we look forward to meeting the same people again at our second Programme Management Meeting of the academic year, to be held in June 2016.