By Helen Allen | Founder and Chair of Trustees PEPAIDS
A quick re-cap!
PEPAIDS Schools of Good Hope Project is working with eight community schools in rural Zambia. Our aim is to reduce the disparity between the quality of education in these schools and government schools. To do that we are improving resources, through a fantastic UK-Zambian school linking programme and training volunteer teachers. Since we last fed back to you, all sorts has been happening!
Teaching the Tricks of the trade!
All of our schools are reliant upon volunteer teachers. While these volunteers had been doing their best, they didn’t really know what to teach or how to teach. With only one or two volunteer teachers per school, classes were vastly over-crowded, and in some schools children could only attend for half a day in order to fit everyone in. Teacher motivation and parent confidence in the schools was low.
Our programme has been training the existing volunteer teachers as well as members of the community who had achieved at least grade 9 at school. The results have been fantastic! Since we started in November 2011, one school has gone from 1 to 10 teachers whilst another has gone from 2 to 12! By educating volunteer teachers with fundamental principles such as seating plans and classroom rules, varied teaching methods and constructive behaviour management, we have seen a tremendous difference! Class sizes are reduced and teacher motivation and parent confidence in the schools has soared! Word has spread of the value of our programme so even volunteer teachers from surrounding schools have been attending the training!
The schools-linking part of our programme has also been a great success! Fantastic fundraising by our UK schools has enabled their partner schools to not only have learning resources, such as wall displays, books, toys and writing materials, but also to install vital equipment such windows, grill gates and locks for the doors so their precious new resources don’t get stolen! In addition, our fundraising has enabled some schools to install toilet blocks, while others have used it to help build new classrooms. As well as providing additional space, one school has been able to cater for a whole new intake of pupils! Pupils in the UK and Zambia have been learning about each other and Cecilia’s School of Good Hope- the namesake of our programme, hosted our first teaching volunteer this April!
Thanks to your tremendous generosity, Schools of Good Hope is achieving everything we hoped for and more! It is a true inspiration to everyone involved!
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