By Mohamed K. Turay
A local Non-Governmental Organization known as the National Youth Awareness Forum (NYAF), with headquarters at Calaba Town in the eastern part of Freetown, yesterday concluded two days training of teachers in three districts: Moyamba, Bonthe and Pujehun.
The training, which was financed by the Education Outcome Funds (EOF), targeted 483 lower and upper teachers in the aforementioned districts. The project is being implemented by NYAF in partnership with Kizazi, a global education non- profit organization whose focus is to bring international expertise across Africa.
Speaking to The Nationalist newspaper after the training NYAF’s Programme Manager, George Foday, said that at the end of the training each teacher received a teacher’s work book while at the same time each student of the said schools would also receive text books and mathematical sets from NYAF through their teachers.
He noted that participants looked or focused at two main subject areas: Mathematics and English Language, to ensure that children had in-depth knowledge on those subjects. He said the organization wanted to see improvements in reading and solving of mathematics in their area of operations. He added that they also intended to improve teachers’ abilities on those subjects and their pedagogical competence in order to improve students’ learning outcomes.
Mr Foday emphasized that, “we don’t want to see failures in any school that NYAF is operating because it would be a failure on our part and our partners.”
The NYAF Moyamba District Supervisor, Samuel Taylor, said that NYAF was collaborating with those three districts to improve the quality of education aimed at complementing Government’s efforts.
It could be recalled that for the past ten years, NYAF and its partners have built schools and empower teachers to be trained and qualified across the countrywide, while at the same time provide school learning materials to them.