In the drive to achieve universal primary education as one of the Millennium Development Goals, there is an increasing recognition of the urgency of focusing on teacher education to both meet the demand for more than one million qualified teachers required to achieve this goal within sub-Saharan Africa, as well as to combat the sometimes poor quality educational experience reported in the school. Currently, approximately only one third of teachers are qualified to teach. This dearth in qualified teachers also means that secondary and tertiary education need to be improved upon to provide an educated cohort of graduates. This in turn will ensure that the quality of teacher trained and retained within the profession is of a sufficiently high standard to ensure sustainable progress. This volume focuses on the various aspects of teacher education which need to be addressed in order for the wider Millennium Goals to be achieved, but more importantly, so that each African child living within sub-Saharan Africa will have the right to a quality education: ensuring they too experience their right and entitlement as children to reach their full potential - often taken for granted in Western countries – giving African children the necessary tools to build a better future for themselves. Of particular interest to the education researcher and policy maker, this volume’s contributors look at the various issues and challenges around the teacher profession, particularly in relation to resources and practices within sub-Saharan Africa. The contributors examine the issue of building research capacity for educational research within teacher education Colleges and explore the concept of education for sustainable development with the view to improving the development of quality teacher education within the global South. In this volume, research reports are presented highlighting the various challenges within the structure and provision of teacher education within certain national contexts, including assessment and curricula issues, which need to be addressed. This volume goes from the global to the local and examines teacher educator teaching, learning and reflective practice issues within different contexts, as well as exploring alternative pre-service experiences for western teachers who wish to work within the sub-Saharan context as well as some teacher educator exchange programmes between the South and North. Case countries explored include Lesotho, South Africa, Mozambique, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar, to mention but a few. Of particular value to the education researcher and policy maker, this book provides a timely resource focusing on an area of neglect, highlighting the central role of the teacher and teacher education towards sustainable development within the sub-Saharan African context.

Continuing Professional Teacher Development in Sub-Saharan Africa explores the prospects that the on-going continuous professional development (CPD) of teachers working in schools offers for meaningful change, particularly towards improving the quality of educational provision for the majority of the continent's children. By reflecting on teacher professional development efforts and their place in broader education reforms, the book highlights the challenges of teacher CPD in these education contexts - contexts strongly shaped by endemic poverty, under-development and social upheaval. The collection draws together examples of innovation and resilience, and the valuing of teachers as critical role players, enabled and empowered through their on-going development as education professionals. Drawing together a wealth of experience, the volume identifies the policy and research implications for the future of CPD across the continent, providing important lessons that can be integrated into a post-2015 development agenda for Africa.

Quality is at the heart of all education systems as good quality teaching and learning environments ensure effective learning outcomes. Quality influences what students learn, how well they learn and what benefits they draw from their education. The quest to ensure that students achieve decent learning outcomes and acquire values and skills that help them play a positive role in their societies is an issue on the policy agenda of nearly every country. As many world governments struggle to expand particularly basic education, they also face the challenge of ensuring that students stay in school long enough to acquire the knowledge they need to cope in a rapidly changing world. The purpose of this book is therefore to profile some aspects of education quality in the African education systems and highlight key policies for improving the teaching and learning outcomes. The book is also intended to provide basic information to scholars who are interested in studying education in the Sub-Saharan African region. To enable users understand and appreciate developments, trends and changes that have taken place in the education systems, for most chapters, the book deliberately adopts a historical approach which leads to some focus on developments which date back to the colonial period in Africa.

Textbooks play a key role in enhancing the quality of learning, especially in the context of low-income Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries characterized by large class-size, poorly motivated and inadequately trained teachers, and short effective school years. There are also high rates of illiteracy among parents and few reading materials at home for the student to bank on. Despite extensive investments by governments, the World Bank and other development partners, the majority of students in primary and secondary schools in SSA still lack the benefit of access to textbooks and the key reason for this shortage is affordability: textbooks are generally much more costly in SSA than in other developing regions. The need to increase access to key learning resources is of particular urgency because most African countries experience low learning outcomes which in part contributes to a high drop-out rate. Only two-thirds of those who enter school reach the final grade and only about half of these master basic numeracy and literacy skills. And although quality improvement depends on many factors inside and outside the school, there is wide agreement that availability of textbooks is both an indispensable and a cost-effective way of improving the quality of the learning process. A recent World Bank study examined the actual costs of textbooks, the scope for cost reduction, the portion of a national budget countries allocate to teaching and learning materials (TLMs) and hurdles in the way of making textbooks available to student. Some interesting findings from the study - - The availability of affordable textbooks to all students could be dramatically improved by devoting an estimated 3 to 4 percent of the primary education budget and 6 to 7 percent of the secondary education budget - The production process †“ methods, copyright, length of print runs, effective procurement practices †“ rather than the production costs should be the target of cost saving strategies - The increased integration of ICTs into education in SSA can provide important opportunities for promoting availability of electronic TLMs but electronic TLMs are not a substitute for printed TLMs including textbooks

In many parts of Africa, the demand for secondary teachers substantially exceeds supply due to factors such as teacher attrition, bottlenecks in the teacher training system and perceived unattractive conditions of service. This publication is based on a literature review and country studies from Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Tanzania and Uganda. It identifies several critical and promising areas for improvement in the quality of secondary teachers through new approaches to recruitment; pre-service and in-service teacher development; and improvements in the deployment, compensation, and conditions of service for teachers.

Teachers are at the heart of good education, and good teacher policies are essential to ensure adequate supply, deployment and management of teachers. Enrollment in primary education has grown rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet teacher policy in the region has oft en evolved without clear planning; in the absence of an overall strategy, countries have experienced serious problems with teacher supply and deployment, as well as with the quality of teaching. Based on case studies of education systems and practices in eight English-speaking African countries, 'Teachers in Anglophone Africa: Issues in Teacher Supply, Training, and Management' closely examines issues of teacher supply, deployment, management and finance. The book suggests that these issues are closely interrelated. Low numbers of qualified teaching graduates may result in teacher shortages; these shortages may make it difficult to deploy teachers effectively. Problems with teacher deployment may result in inefficient utilization of the teachers available, and those teachers' effectiveness may be further reduced by weak teacher management and support systems. The book identifies policies and practices that are working on the ground, noting their potential pitfalls and pointing out that policies designed to address one problem may make another problem worse. 'Teachers in Anglophone Africa: Issues in Teacher Supply, Training, and Management' offers a useful synthesis of the issues and draws together a series of promising practices, which can serve as positive suggestions for countries seeking to improve their teacher policies. The book should be of great assistance to education ministries and their development partners throughout the region as they address the challenges of the next phases of expansion in education.