stabilisation
on Kate Walters (The Gambia), 03/Oct/2010 10:23, 34 days ago
With the start of a new academic year comes the process of stabilisation. Teachers and Headteachers alike may find they have been posted to a new school in a different area of region and often don't want to move. The regional managers have to trek around the region checking there are enough teachers in each school and dealing with any issues. We hear reports that the mud has been somewhat hindering this process, with a great deal of waiting for tow-trucks involved in this years stabilisation.Yesterday we visited a local Early Childhood Development centre, or nursery school to you and me. Unfortunately for us it was a private centre which excludes it from our remit. It was however the best educational setting I have seen yet in the region. 3 small classrooms were filled with the things you would expect to see in such a setting– colourful objects hanging from the ceiling, pictures and home-made storybooks pinned to the walls, books and jigsaws piled on tables that were clearly used by the children. The place was crammed with children from around 3-6 years, the new starters not yet in uniform being led around by older siblings, behaving as children of that age should – looking at and touching things, talking to you and each other and generally interacting in a way that seems to be stamped out of children as they get to primary school. It was a revelation and full credit to the incredibly young, and as of yet unqualified, teacher running the place. A world away from an ECD that Lucy visited recently where the room was laid out in the style of a university lecture theatre with full-sized benches and chairs for toddlers!Any views expressed are my own and are not representative of VSO.