TEACH

The TEACH (Teacher Effectiveness and Equitable Access for All Children) programme is designed to enhance teachers’ effectiveness, leading to improved learning outcomes across Zimbabwe.  The UK Aid-funded TEACH programme has two components: education access, which is being implemented by UNICEF Zimbabwe, and teacher professional development, which is implemented by EDT. Our work on the teacher professional development component of the programme focuses on improving the quality and effectiveness of teaching in the country through high-quality teacher professional development.

We work closely with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) and the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology, as while also collaborating with UNICEF Zimbabwe and the British Council. We aim to strengthen the national education system, making it more sustainable and ensuring that it offers high-quality teaching which is equitably accessible to all children. Our work is designed to provide training for assessment and inspection reforms, facilitate greater support for girls and children with disabilities, improve learning outcomes in English and mathematics, and ensure that the drop-out rate for girls (at Grade 4 level) remains no higher than it was in 2018. 

We work in 42 districts across Zimbabwe. Over the course of the four-year programme, we aim to train over 85,000 teachers and 5,000 school leaders, as well as over 300 school inspectors.

The programme has several key areas of focus:

System strengthening: We use training, coaching and teacher learning communities to improve teaching and learning – specifically in literacy and numeracy – across the education system. We are working to align pre-service and in-service teacher training to strengthen links between schools and teacher education colleges and provide a cohesive framework for professional development from initial training and throughout teachers’ careers. As of August 2023, we had trained almost 22,000 teachers and over 3,000 school leaders from 19 districts of Zimbabwe.

Supporting inspection and assessment reforms: We are helping to review school inspections to strengthen the quality of teaching and learning support, introducing comprehensive new inspection methodologies and improving the process by which national early learning assessments are conducted.

Building capacity of school leaders: We work with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to support school leadership development initiatives and respond to gaps in school leadership capacity to support teacher professional development in schools. We support school leaders with competency frameworks and toolkits designed to help them champion, monitor and evaluate teaching and learning in their schools, and to help them develop leadership skills to drive improvements in school performance. The school leaders we work with are also trained in inclusion awareness and overcoming barriers to learning for marginalised groups, notably girls and learners with disabilities, as well as barriers to women in leadership. By mid-2023, we had reached over 3,000 school leaders with this training. 

Monitoring, Evaluation, Research & Learning (MERL): We provide continuous tracking and evaluation of the teacher professional development component of the TEACH programme, along with research services and support for information systems.