Teachers Empowerment Platform

Luweero, Uganda

TEP empowers Ugandan teachers to deliver quality education through building a network, uniting providers and providing quality training.

1. Building a Network: TEP has built a network of hundreds of education stakeholders who collaborate online and face to face. 2. Uniting Providers: TEP has brought several similarly focused organisations together in the Ugandan Teacher Training Network. 3. Providing Quality Training: TEP provides high quality tailored training to schools in need and partners each of them them with a model school.

bookmark_border

Bookmark

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2013

Established

-

Children

1

Countries

Updated

April 2019

The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.

About the innovation

Teachers Empowerment Platform: An Overview

Background

Sustainable Development Goal 4 is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. As the renowned McKinsey report points out, a quality education depends on quality teaching. Quality teaching, however, requires quality training. Unfortunately, many Ugandan teachers, particularly in rural areas do not receive this.

Strategy

TEP aims to change this using a 3 strand approach.

Strand 1: Building a Network

There is extensive research showing that teacher collaboration is highly effective at improving teaching quality. The network that we have built fosters this collaboration between teachers. The network functions both online and face to face.Online we have a collaborative group with over 100 members. In this group teachers seek support, give advice and share resources using our online file sharing system. Furthermore, every 3 months we host a face-to-face collaborative meeting, in partnership with Edumatters, in which teachers and other education stakeholders come together to discuss and problem solve around key topics in education. Additionally, we are currently setting up subject specific communities of practice as another way to foster collaboration online and face to face.

Strand 2: Uniting Providers

As Kania and Kramer put it, “No single organisation is responsible for any major social problem, nor can any single organisation cure it.”

There are currently a number of teacher training organisations working in Uganda however they are somewhat scattered and isolated. We aim to bring these organisations together in order to create a bigger impact.

Therefore, assisted by LRTT, we have created the Ugandan Teacher Training Network. We have reached out to 16 organisations to join this. We aim for these organisations to collaborate in our dedicated online forum, to host inter-organisational visits and to participate in joint conferences and meetings on best training practice.

Strand 3: Providing Training

Our third and final strand is providing training to schools in need. When we partner with a school we identify a lead teacher and assess the school’s needs through observations, meetings and surveys. We then deliver an initial training workshop which responds to these needs and follow that with a tailored ongoing relationship with the school. This could involve observations, visits, training sessions, mentorship etc… For each school we will also train them up in the use of basic IT skills as this will increase their access to our online resources. Additionally we link them with a model school who can further support the school in their improvement process.

Media

Edugathering 6th April

Pilot 8th February

Implementation steps

Collaboration

There are many ways in which you can foster collaboration between different members of the teaching community. These are some of the main models that inspired us:

Communities of Practice

Lesson Study

School Learning Triads

Importantly, we have used tools such as Google Drive, WhatsApp and social networks to make these models function online as well as in person, meaning teachers can collaborate even when at a distance.

Partnerships

Collective impact is key to tackle big issues such as teaching quality. This is why, rather than simply making lots of separate partnerships with similar organisations, we have established the Ugandan Teacher Training Network. This is a space where all the relevant organisations can collaborate in order to achieve their aims. We recommend seeking out multilateral agreements which reach across the public, private and charitable sectors in order to make the largest impact.

Training

Quality teacher training and support is essential to improving the quality of education in a country. There are many models out there and it is up to you to work out what best practice is in your context. For us, we have found that the best method is working over a long period of time with a small number of schools to develop a tailored course of training sessions, mentorship, observations and visits. We also partner these schools with model schools who can help them in other ways for example with resources. We then train up lead teachers in that school to be not only good teachers but also good trainers as well. This may work well in your context, or it may not. To find out you can seek out relevant research, speak to organisations operating in similar conditions and try things out. The important thing is to be reflective - collect data and track impact. If it's not working, change something.