The Gambia: Basic Education Support for Poverty Reduction (BESPOR)
Funded by DFID, BESPOR assists The Gambia’s education sector reforms in adopting a sector-wide approach and developing the quality of teacher training and school development.
Project duration: 2005-2008
BESPOR consists of three main components:
- SWAp: BESPOR supports the Department of State for Education (DoSE) and the Government of The Gambia to adopt a sector-wide approach (SWAp) to education. This involves all stakeholders and donors. The purpose of the SWAp is to avoid duplication of resources and to improve the institutional capacity of the education system.
- Whole school development: the project supports implementing an approach called ’whole school development’. WSD focuses on all aspects of school development, ranging from the involvement of local communities in the day to day operations of a school to the creation of improved conditions for learning.
- Teacher development: as part of this reform process the project will also create an integrated system of teacher development and use innovative delivery mechanisms to increase the number of teachers who receive training.
Project activities include analysing needs, stakeholders and the situation, developing curriculum and training, consultancy in education management, analysing finances and making recommendations on budgets, developing distance learning programmes, creating an MIS database system and computer network, working with community stakeholders and building institutional capacity. |