Education Ministry, Right to Play, partners launch Partners in Play Project

The Ministry of Education in partnership with Right To Play International and LEGO Foundation, has launched “Partners in Play Project” to improve teaching and learning, and integrate “Learning to Play (LtP)” in schools across the country.

The project targeting learners in kindergarten and primary schools has been designed to influence teacher capacity development in play-based learning and teaching approaches among the 10,000 primary schools under the Ghana Accountability and Learning Outcomes project nationwide.

The Minister of Education (MoE), Mr Matthew Opoku Prempeh who joined the launch held in Koforidua virtually last Thursday, said the project has been tailored by the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) as well as other partners to “also build capacity of district education officials in charge of teachers training so that these approaches are scaled up in our schools”.

Aim
Mr Opoku Prempeh said the implementation of the “Partners in Play Project” aimed at beefing up the teaching and learning skills of millions of pupils.

“The Ministry of Education is partnering with Right to Play and the LEGO Foundation, through the Partners in Play Project with the aim to improve the quality of teaching and learning for more than 3,500,000 Ghanaian girls and boys aged 4-12 through scalable and replicable play-based learning model,” he said.

He explained that in collaboration with GES and other MoE agencies, Right to Play would support the development and implementation of training frameworks for teachers capacity building through a cascade model to be well developed to ensure that kindergarten and primary school teachers have the capacity to implement effectively the standards-based curriculum.

Innovation                                                                                                                                                                          The Country Director of Right To Play Ghana, Ms Josephine Mukakalisa said the integration of “Learning through Play (LtP) would breed innovation and help beneficiaries of the project to be critical thinkers, think creatively to exude innovation.”

Ms Mukakalisa said the four and half year project has been designed address challenges related to teacher teaching practices, schools support and management, institutional capacity to supervise and monitor the curriculum implementation process.

She added that the project that has targeted 80,000 teachers and 413,221 care givers, 10,000 schools, and over 3 million pupils would aid the transition in integrating of LtP into pre-service teachers training, as well as create guides to support the integration of LtP into existing courses at the teacher colleges and universities.