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Transforming Christian Education in Africa

Project Purpose
To stimulate widespread and significant improvements in the quality of Christian education in schools across sub-Saharan Africa.

Background
The main factor holding back social and economic progress in Africa is its poor educational quality.  Schools in Africa are marked by low standards, overcrowding, poor planning, weak expertise, poor governance and lack of vision.  Financial viability, leadership and professionalism are significant shortcomings, making school governance and leadership development the essential foundational issue to address before improvements in other areas can be sustainable.


Proposal
Research shows that improving the quality of school board governance and leadership is one of the most powerful ways to raise the educational achievement of students.  Unfortunately, this key strategy is far too often neglected.  If the quality of education in Christian schools across Africa is to improve, establishing sound, proficient governance in school boards is a prime prerequisite.  Such leadership must be sustainable and professional, and it must explicitly reject the temptations of corruption.

Proposed Action and Outcome
A robust program of governance and leadership training for boards of Christian schools will establish the sound basis necessary to enhance the quality of Christian education for millions of children, without which the effective transformation of Christian education in Africa will be impossible.


Partnerships
Alphacrucis College is keen to use its expertise to improve the quality of Christian schooling in Africa.  To this end, we have been working with ACSI (Association of Christian Schooling International) as it is the peak organisation with a membership of 23,000 Christian schools across 34 countries in Africa, with well over 7 million students in their care.  This reach gives us the potential to have prodigious, widespread, lasting impact in schools across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Work to Date
In July 2018, Dr Stephen Codrington from Alphacrucis College provided governance training for the board of ACSI East Africa at their request.  This training proved to be transformative and enlightening, resulting in substantial and continuing improvements in the leadership of the attendees’ schools.

Further Development Work
As a consequence of that experience, multiple Christian schools throughout Uganda have asked for governance workshops from Stephen in July 2019 in an attempt to transform the professionalism and raise the Christian vision of their school boards.  Christian schools in Kenya have asked for the same, and requests have started coming from elsewhere in Africa.  Multi-day workshops have been scheduled for two cities in Uganda in early July 2019 as a result.


On-going Strategy
The workshop sessions in July will be spent providing training as well as exploring options for further professional development in areas such as leadership development and teaching methodology.  It is hoped that boards of Christian schools elsewhere in Africa will observe the benefits of these workshops and thus also seek to improve their leadership and governance practices with similar training. Once this foundation of sound leadership and governance has been soundly established, we hope to expand this support to build momentum for national and international mobilisation of educational improvement across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Funding Sought
The schools that can benefit most from governance training simply have no present capacity to pay for such training.  For the 2018 workshops, Stephen paid for all his own air fares, but he cannot continue to do that as the demand for training grows and expands.  The cost for Stephen to provide one week’s governance training in Uganda to multiple school boards in two cities would be a little over $7,000.  If additional funds above that figure could be raised, training support could be provided to schools in nearby countries as well, and a basis could be established for ongoing support for the improvement of Christian schools in Africa through professional development, leadership training, board enhancement and teacher formation.

For residents of Australia and the USA, your donation is TAX DEDUCTIBLE if requested.


Organizer

Stephen Codrington
Organizer
Macquarie Park NSW

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