Workshops for Gambian teachers - a five year project

Pageant has run Practical Science and Microscopy Workshops for seven years now. [see summary of all Pageant workshops] The benefits of the practical approach to teaching science have been recognised by the authorities, particularly Gambia College (the Gambian Teacher Training college). We are very keen to 'strike while the iron is hot' and the Ministry of Basic Education is keen to see a measurable effect. To that end it has named three particular schools in the area reasonably close to Gambia College that it would like to use to assess the benefits of this approach over a 5-year period. If we can show how well the model works we may well see it being state funded and adopted across the country. Gambia College is already committed to this pilot project and the Head of Science there has asked for assistance from the 'Pageant team'.

We are providing equipment, training manuals and training to these three schools and class sets of physics, electricity and microscopy kits for primary and secondary levels. 30 physics, electricity and microscopy kits were built and assembled in the UK, and then be shipped to The Gambia by air. The physics and electricity manuals were printed and shipped to The Gambia by sea, together with 30 microscopes for the secondary levels. A further batch of 30 microscopes for the primary level were bought and shipped out by air, together with the microscopy manuals. Some donations have already been received for the kits [see the Electronics Teaching Kit and the Physics Teaching Kit in our list of Ethical Gifts] but we need to raise a total of £4,600 to cover the cost of this first year of the project.

Kathy and Chris did their best to keep us up-to-date by posting news on the Pageant News Blog, and we have collected their posts on this page.

Donate to help fund our workshops

If you would like to make a donation to help with the costs of running these incredibly important workshops, then follow this link for more information.