Training of Informal School Teachers

The school started in 2012 to educate vulnerable students from Kibera who could not afford schools fees. Most of the students admitted by the school were orphaned, some came from single parents’ households and others were teenage parents who had previously dropped out of school. The school also serves as an exam center for private candidates (mostly adults) who study privately and only come to sit for exams.

The school started with three students in 2012 and the number has increased with time to 215 students today. Over 2,000 students have been able to sit for their KCSE and around 50% joined colleges and tertiary training.

ChallengeAid partnered with Silver Spring in November 2020, the aim was to assist the students to boost their academic performance through e-learning in Mathematics, English and Sciences zoom sessions, taught by teachers from the UK but was interrupted by Covid restrictions and lockdowns in Kenya.

ChallengeAid stepped in to support multiple informal schools from Nairobi slums to cover the syllabus and be ready for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) after schooling was disrupted by the outbreak of COVID-19.

The zoom sessions and interaction with new teachers led to a change of attitude towards Mathematics and Sciences. This has led to vastly improved academic performance.

At Silver Spring, history was made during the March 2022 national exams as 6 students out of 65 who sat for KCSE managed to qualify for the university. This is the first time since the school started that any student has ever qualified to join a University.

Due to the outstanding results we have most recently received from Siler Spring and indications from other Schools of Hope (SoH), we are broadening our approach. We have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Association of Informal Schools of Kenya and our intention is to teach the english, maths and science teachers who tend to be poorly trained, poorly paid and at times lack motivation so that they can be upskilled by our volunteer teaching team in the UK. This teaching approach will go into 4 SoH which have been chosen because of their excellent WiFi connectivity and relitively secure electrical connection so that the inset training can do done by zoom. Each of these 4 SoH will have 45 teachers attending the session, this totals the training of 180 SoH teachers coming in from all different areas of Kenya. Each SoH will be fitted with a printer, projector and screen with ChallengeAid Africa staff in each centre being connected to the UK. As previously stated, our teachers in the UK have been teaching the Kenyan Syllabus for over a year now and are qualified as inspectors and in the teaching of teachers. The informal teachers will be made aware of all the best teaching aids that are available with all the up-to-date publications from the Kenyan Government such as changes in syllabus, most recent exam questions and model answers. This pilot project will also research which areas the teachers feel less comfortable in teaching so that they cant be rehearsed and practiced. Each subject inset will take place over 4 hours on a Saturday and should lead to the cascading down of information and expertise into the classrooms of the informal schools.