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Mentor Teachers

Photo of people gathered around a flip chart To facilitate supervision and accountability, the Malawi primary education system group schools within a hierarchy. At the highest level are education divisions, which group several districts into a region. Within a district, there are district education managers who oversee zones. Schools in a district are streamlined into zones which have an average of approximately 15 schools. The zones are under the authority of the Primary Education Advisor (PEA).

Previous USAID education projects learned that it was not always possible for the PEA to effectively supervise and monitor all the school in their zones. Adopting a best practice from the QUEST project, MESA instituted school clusters and cluster mentor teachers to decentralize teacher training and supervision to small groups of schools.

The clusters were established in all four impact districts, based on the following criteria:

distant between the schools
geographical location (i.e. geographical features that may limit access)
development of the schools
number of teachers in the schools.

Each cluster has a cluster mentor teacher who is responsible for training and supervision activities within those schools. He or she works closely with the PEA for that education zone and the Head teachers in the schools. Assistant mentor teachers also support the clusters with large numbers of teachers to ensure adequate supervision and training. The mentor teachers were selected on the basis of their professional qualifications and commitment to teaching and learning.

Following-up the mentor teachers' work to ensure that they begin their responsibilities well will be a challenge, especially in Mzimba South and Kasungu where the distances between schools are far. However, with adequate support from the PEAs and SC/US Education Facilitators, it is expected that the cluster mentor teachers will assume their roles and responsibilities with vigor. As the mentor teachers begin supervising teachers in their clusters, it is anticipated that they will find out the particular needs of the teachers to enable them design short school-based courses to improve the teachers' teaching skills.