Pacemaker International: Community Based Teaching Assistants Fellowship (CBTAF)

THE CHALLENGE

The teacher shortage in Kenya’s primary schools presently stands at around 50,000. Annually, there is about 600,000 local youth completing their secondary school national examination who, then, mostly enter into an unstructured society. This situation is acute and dire in primary schools in slums and underserved communities.  

The lack of physical and social amenities in slums makes teachers posted by the government to these areas constantly look for transfers to schools in middle-income areas. The resultant effect of this is that primary schools in slums comparatively perform poorly in the national examination, their transition to secondary schools is hampered further confining learners from these areas to the cyclic chain of poverty. 

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Through the project, the NGO leverages the skills, energy, and experience of a resource that is readily available but overly underutilized, local youth, to mitigate the effects of acute teachers’ shortage in Kenya’s primary schools.

Annually, 250 local youth are recruited for the 9-month fellowship, with a volunteer service component. After completing a one-week pre-deployment training, the fellows are placed in underserved primary schools in slums and rural areas, where they volunteer as teaching assistants.
CBTAF aims to:

1. Improve the learning outcomes for students in underserved primary schools in Kenya’s slum and rural areas.
2. Equip local youth with change-making skills