IIECL staff member, L. Diane Mull, has recently completed the field work on a final evaluation of a Community Teachers Program operating in Ghana that was funded by USAID and managed by the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH). The program’s goal was to recruit teachers from very rural, isolated communities to train them to become qualified teachers leading them toward achieving their Diploma in Basic Education. The program targeted 260 untrained community teachers (UCTs), provided them with two years of intensive training through Ghanaian teacher training colleges, and placed them in classroom at 60 MIDA-renovated schools in 14 districts in the Northern, Eastern, Central and Ashanti regions of Ghana. The UCTs achieved 48 of the 84 credit hours needed for a DBE and two years of practicum in the classroom. The program included an intensive collaboration between district education offices within the Ghana Education Service (GES), three Colleges of Education (Tamale, OLA and ABETIFI), the Institute of Education at the University of Cape Coast, and IFESH. Ninety-nine percent (99%) of trainees who started the program were still enrolled at the end of the program and 98% of these had passed all required exams.
