Feed A Hungry Mind

Whole School Development Programme  - September report 2012

Tanzania’s primary schools re-open on Monday 10^th September after an extended holiday because of the national census which took place in August. The Standard VII end-of-primary national examinations will be held on 19^th and 20^th September, and the schools will close for the year on 14^th December.

Jane Firth visited again in July and gave a seminar for the School Inspectors from Moshi Rural District. The seminar was to show them Jane’s teaching methods for basic mathematics, and how all her activities, materials and resources relate to topics in the national syllabi. The inspectors enjoyed the demonstrations and certainly gained confidence to be able to assist teachers during future inspections. This is a crucial step in ensuring that teachers using the new methods are fully supported.

Also in July Dr Anne Samson returned. Anne held another seminar with the Inspectors of Schools for Moshi Rural District and the tutors from Singa Chini Teacher-Training College. The major focus was on ‘participatory’ teaching and assessment. This meeting, following on from two previous ones, was conducted with an Inspector from the Zonal Inspectorate office for the North-Eastern Zone. The seminar developed further the discussion of how best to assess pupils’ work. With the emphasis now being strongly on ‘participatory’  teaching methods, the old methods of assessment (written exercises and tests) can no longer be the only assessments of work. There was much healthy discussion and many questions, but also agreement that new methods of assessment must be allowed in the primary schools. Anne wants to develop , in a future seminar, the understanding of ‘participatory teaching’ which itself would lead to a greater understanding of how to assess the pupils’ learning.

Anne also found time in her visit to sit with the head teachers of the eleven government primary schools in Mabogini ward to talk to them about our Whole School Development Programme and whether they have seen any benefits or improvements. The teachers all agreed that the benefits to date had been enormous. The management training for head-teachers, and the training for some school committee members had helped the running of the schools and the understanding of the duties to be performed. The training in teaching basic mathematics had had the greatest impact, with teachers enjoying their work, pupils turning up because they enjoy using the materials/resources, and other teachers wanting to teach the younger classes, and seeing the benefit of the use of resources. This was most encouraging for our project, and in particular for our current follow-up work where we spend 4 days a week in schools to support the use of the new methods.

Katy Allen and Dilly Mtui have made two visits to Dar es Salaam, mostly to promote the English course books for teaching English in government primary schools – the NOEC. They met the newly appointed Commissioner for Education at the Ministry of Education & Vocational Training and had a very positive discussion about the use of the NOEC books. This was coupled with meeting Zonal Chief Inspectors of Schools in Arusha and Dar es Salaam and getting their commitment to study the NOEC books and give feedback on the need for them. A very good meeting with professors from the Education Department of the University of Dar es Salaam promises to lead to a workshop in November.

Katy and Dilly continue with their columns in two national daily newspapers: The Citizen  and Mwananchi. Katy has a weekly column in the Young Citizen which appears in the Sunday Citizen. These articles incorporate printed stories and comprehension questions from the NOEC and are aimed at a young audience . Dilly has a weekly column in Tuesday’s Mwananchi (a Swahili daily and also the best selling newspaper in the country). Dilly’s column has a serious commentary on the teaching methods used in the books, and also has a weekly quiz in the form of a short story with a cartoon and questions to test and show the many words in Swahili adopted from English. The columns are to promote the NOEC books, and several emails have been received by readers ranging from interested parents keen to get the NOEC books for their children to those interested in the work that we do in general.

Barbara Kerr joined the project in August, and Jill Nash has also just joined for a three-month assignment. Barbara will be working in the primary schools in Mabogini ward with teachers of mathematics from Standard III to VII. Barbara will help to extend our mathematics programme beyond Jane Firth’s work in Standard I and II, and  will be delivering seminars on top of her core work as a teacher-mentor in the classrooms. Jill will be in Benjamin Mkapa primary school in Mabogini ward helping the teachers with their teaching of English.

Our website has been updated, and the new Facebook page (linked from the Home Page of the website) has regular updates on our work where you can stay in touch with week-to-week activities in the project.

The donations which come through Global Giving are mostly anonymous, and so we are unable to write personal ‘thank you’ messages to those donors. We are very grateful to receive such generous gifts and hope that those who give towards our work know how much we rely on those donations to continue with our work, and how very grateful we are for them.

With many, many thanks to all our donors for their kindness in helping our Whole School Development Progamme.

Katy Allen

Director

8^th September 2012