In partnership with NILE, TransformELT wholly managed the BCCEPS project in 2018-19 with Sarah Mount as Project Manager and Alan Mackenzie as Academic Manager. Susan Bardhun (Team Leader) and David Watkins (Assistant Team Leader) conducted a two-week needs analysis of School Supervisors in October 2018.
In November and December, two two-week training courses were held at the JeCCDO Training Centre in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. The training was delivered by TransformELT in partnership with the British Council, DfID and NILE. There were approximately 220 participants at each training event, from all eleven regions of the country. This required a team of nine additional Professional Coaches. This was followed by a one-week course led by Susan to train monitors to oversee and support the implementation of the action plans created by the participants of the BCCEPS training.
IThe BCCEPS course was designed for trios of participants from 150 schools. Each trio was composed of a supervisor, principal and teacher, with each trio focused on the same primary school. The purpose of having trios, rather than just supervisors (as had been the intention before the needs analysis identified that the benefit to schools would be much more impactful with the trio model) was for the trios to work as a team of coaches and operate as a development cell within their school. This would lead to:
- the development of model clusters of schools within model woredas
- improved dialogue between all stakeholders on teacher development issues
- shared responsibility in reaching solutions
It was gratifying to see that over 90% of the participants said they would recommend the course to a colleague, they also gave the training materials 100% relevance and clarity scores.
- I have never been to a course like this and it has been surprising and wonderful.
- I will remember this course for the rest of my life. I will continue to practice and learn.
- I did not know about coaching before; now I know and this is something that I will use in the future.
- The training has been exciting and very interesting.
- I really appreciate this course, all that I have learned and everything we do.
- This course is very exciting for me. So many new things I am learning.
- Everything is new and I like this very much.
- We will bring these ideas & activities back to our schools & classes and they will help us in the future.
This was one of the most rewarding projects I have ever worked on. I particularly appreciated the fact that TransformELT committed time and resources to conducting a thorough Needs Analysis. We were able to spend two weeks in Ethiopia in real classrooms, talking to students, teachers, principals, supervisors and regional leaders. This prompted the realisation that we needed to extend the focus of the project to include teachers and principals, and not just supervisors. Project delivery comprised two-week training sessions for nearly 450 educators, followed by one week of training for the monitors who would be involved in the Monitoring and Evaluation phase of the project. There were 11 highly experienced trainers, a wonderful team to live and work with. And from the feedback, we can believe that it was a life-changing experience for the participants. I very much look forward to working with TransformELT in the future.
Dr. Susan Barduhn
Project Team Leader
