On Thursday June 9th 2022, a virtual meeting was hosted by Graham Hastings, the purpose of the meeting was to allow Graham Hastings the opportunity to outline the progress made to date during the first phase of the ‘Teach the Teacher’ programme in The Gambia.

Since last November we have been conducting the first phase of the ‘Teach the Teacher’ programme during which Graham Hastings has been teaching live computing lessons to a cohort of 45 students at Mansa-Colley Bojang School in The Gambia. The aim of this phase of the programme is to assess the viability of a ‘hub’, resourced for online teaching and learning, to which teachers and pupils from other schools could be invited to attend teacher training and class teaching, delivered to the ‘hub’ over a long distance (for this first phase, from the United Kingdom).

The Honourable Minister was invited to allow her to gain a fuller understanding of how the next phase of the project would work under the leadership of Alpha Bah and to enable her to convey her understanding of the requirements of the ‘Teach the Teacher’ programme to the President and to Ministers in other Government departments that would be strategic to the development of every aspect of the programme, including communications technology.

Claude Sholade was able to demonstrate how the technology has been implemented at M-CBS with some students briefly explaining their experience of the programme. He also outlined a week-long course that students of the school’s STEM club had put on for the benefit of visiting teachers and pupils from neighbouring Government schools as an illustration of the potential for such a hub to expand its sphere of influence.

The Rotary Foundation had previously funded the construction of the Mansa-Colley Bojang School and had provided initial funding to get the ‘Teach the Teacher’ programme off the ground, with additional support from the micro:bit Foundation and St John’s College School in Cambridge. One objective of the meeting was for the Rotary Foundation to fully understand the requirements for setting up the additional hubs in a country that has a developing technology infrastructure. Rotary were excited by the possibility of creating not only the physical hubs, but a community outreach initiative for education in its broadest sense, including adult education for such things as, eHealth, generic skills, entrepreneurship, child development, nutrition, agriculture, environmental issues, adult numeracy and literacy to name but a few. Subsequent to and as a result of this meeting, Rotary Foundation in District 1080 have decided to expand their support for the programme. They have also committed to promoting the ‘Teach the Teacher’ programme to Rotary International using The Gambian model as a working example.

The next action will be to hold a meeting with Alpha Bah and the Honourable Minister of Basic and Secondary Education to plan the installation of six more hubs in Government schools.

We would like to extend our thanks to the Honourable Minister and all those who attended for their and support as well as to the Rotary Foundation and St John’s College School for their backing.

Graham Hastings