Center for Social Innovation

The Problem

In many African countries, the quality of secondary education is deteriorating. In Ghana, while enrollment ratios increased from 37 percent in 1990 to 55 percent in 2008, student pass rates on terminal exams for core curriculum subjects decreased from 36 to 25 percent between 2006 and 2008. “Access to education, a goal of African governments working under budget constraints, has increased, but student performance has declined,” observes Amporful. “My own personal experience and research on education highlight the poor quality of teachers and school leaders as a leading factor.”

The inadequacy of African secondary education will only continue to degrade with widening teacher gaps. Ghana, in particular, currently has only a quarter of the teachers it needs to serve in pre-tertiary levels. Of the approximately 26,000 teachers who are employed in secondary schools, more than half lack adequate training.

With African economies just on the cusp of positive economic change, the situation is critical. “Most sub-Saharan African countries grew at or above five percent continuously for the first time during the 2000s, and this pace of growth will require a substantive and trainable labor base with basic education,” Amporful emphasizes. “Clearly, it’s time for an effective intervention.” To help address the problem, he has founded the Institute of Teacher Education and Development.

The Novel Idea

The Institute of Teacher Education and Development (INTED) is an independent, nonprofit organization that is developing a scalable program to improve the quality of teaching and administration of secondary education in Africa, starting with a pilot case on Ghana. This in-country capacity-building solution will eventually be replicated in other countries. INTED uses a “trainer of trainer” model that emphasizes putting the responsibility as well as the rewards for a successful program squarely on the participating secondary school teachers and administrators.

The pilot will work during a five-year period, reaching 10 percent of secondary schools in Ghana — among the nation’s top-performing institutions as measured by student test scores. Set to begin in summer 2012, it will convene 100 teachers and school leaders, selected based on their degree of passion for making changes in the education system, for a three-week summer intensive. The intensive, to be offered by an institute of higher education, will help participants strengthen their content knowledge and pedagogical skills in a minimum of four core areas: math, English, social sciences, and integrated sciences.

During the subsequent 2012-13 school year, staff and consultants to INTED will monitor and evaluate teachers’ progress in the classroom. In the summer of 2013, the group will once again convene, this time to learn how to become trainers of the material themselves. The program will be repeated for three subsequent classes, instructing a total of 700 professionals to become better teachers as well as peer trainers. The successful pilot will then be used to develop a program that may be scaled throughout the remaining 90 percent of secondary schools in Ghana. If successful, such a pilot can also be introduced across West Africa, where the same education curriculum is in effect.

As part of the program, INTED will deploy an incentive program to encourage ongoing improvement and the sharing of best practices. Each year, the schools involved will compete for a “most improved schools award” in both student terminal exams and teaching performance from the previous year. The total cash-based award will be shared among the top three winning schools, which can be used to improve facilities and resources, and remunerate participating teachers and leaders. Teachers in the program will contribute to a monthly newsletter highlighting their experiences and best practices according to their subject areas and focus.

Eventually, the program will become self-sufficient, not requiring training from outside institutions. Top teachers in other existing training programs will be given the opportunity to understudy alumni of INTED as assistant teachers, and others will serve as summer intensive instructors.

In putting together this innovative project, Amporful has solicited support from an advisory team of stakeholders in Ghana’s educational and business sector, including the Ministry of Education, as well as international universities and educational agencies, private funders and foundations, and association of heads of schools. One of the most supportive institutions has been the Stanford University School of Education, under the enthusiastic aegis of professors Pamela Grossman and Susan O’Hara of the Stanford Summer Teaching Institute. The Institute of Teacher Education and Development will rely on grant funding for its initial operations.

The Innovator

Growing up in Ghana, Kwabena Amporful, like most students in his country, had only moderate enthusiasm for education. When he was given the opportunity to go to an international high school, however, everything changed. “I suddenly found everything interesting. Teachers in my high school were alive with material, presented it systematically, and made learning and engaging with it exciting,” he says.

After attending Hampshire College in the United States and heading off to Wall Street to become a financial analyst, Amporful co-founded NEO Africa Foundation, which supported 20 students in 12 secondary schools across Ghana through financial assistance, mentorship, and extra teaching support during the summers. “We realized great results with the student scholars,” he says. “All of them passed their terminal exams, compared to only 25 percent of students nationally, and all of them attended university, versus only 6 percent nationally.”

Amporful attended the MBA program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business “to go back to thinking like an entrepreneur,” he says. After returning to Ghana in 2009 to work with the largest full-service investment bank in Ghana, he decided to take his idea to apply his energies to improving the country’s educational system more seriously. Pinpointing teachers and school leaders as his starting point, he developed the Institute of Teacher Education and Development (INTED).

“Without the encouragement and support of faculty and administrators at Stanford University, and particularly the Center for Social Innovation, I simply couldn’t be doing this project now,” Amporful says. “I’m thrilled to be working on it. The folks on the ground in Ghana are extremely excited that a person from the private sector is looking at solutions to one of their main social problems. It gives them wind in their sails.”