An effective and accountable system of Supervision aimed at ensuring acquisition of the defined competencies in place

Supervision in GSS means mainly teacher support aimed at building her/his capacity to create the appropriate learning environment inside the classroom, undertake the critical elements of active teaching learning in particular, time management, and lesson planning based on continuous assessment of individual learner performance child follow through all the transactions inside the classroom, to ensure that the key elements of teaching learning are in place, and finally, to guarantee expected learner outcome in each area of competency. Understandably, academic supervision takes up 80% of the supervision time while administrative supervision takes up about 20% of the time.

Supervisory Structure

Supervision is undertaken at three levels: School level supervision by the School Supervisors (SS); Cluster level supervision and Coordination by the Area Coordinators (AC). In addition, supervision of each region is coordinated by a Regional Coordinator (RC) who is responsible not only for learner performance but also the overall management of the programme in each region. The supervision span of the SS is 1 : 4, and that of the AC, 1 : 12. The RC, on the other hand could have up to 8 ACs under him.

Details of the three functionaries are presented below:

1. School Supervisor (SS): The SS is responsible for the performance of up to 720 children and 12 teachers. The SS is usually picked up from amongst the senior teachers who have demonstrated a high level of competency in teacher development. An AC undergoes a 15 day Basic training followed by a 21 day supervision training. Thereafter, he is trained on the job for up to 12 months, working as a teacher as well as rotating between Supervision, Teacher Training and the Curriculum Units. This helps the AC gain a comprehensive understanding of the pedagogy, teacher education and support, classroom teaching learning, assessment and expected learner outcome. While the SS is responsible for Fortnightly Assessment, the AC is responsible, in addition to his regular tasks for Monthly Follow-up training, Six monthly Refresher training and Quarterly Assessment of individual learner performance.



2. Regional Coordinator (RC): This is a senior field level position. Nobody is recruited directly in the post but a member of staff having worked as an AC, a senior curriculum developer or a Master Trainer for over 5 years may be entrusted with the responsibility. The RC in addition to supervision of the activities of the ACs, oversees both programme designing and implementation at the field level. The number of schools supervised by the RC varies from 40 to 80. The RC is not only responsible for the Regional Education Budget and the performance of his staff but also for the performance of learner achievement in his region.

Supervisory Functions
The key functions of an SS include the following:

• Ensuring that all the children in the community got enrolled;
• That the learning environment inside the classroom allowed children to interact, provided them with a choice of activities, made classroom displays and resources especially wide selection of reading materials available inside the classroom and most importantly, that the learning environment was free from intimidation;
• That the teacher is able to facilitate and transact all activities satisfactorily in accordance with the curriculum linked time-management;
• That Lesson Plan is based on continuous (weekly) assessment of the individual learner allowing each child to proceed according to her/his ability and pace; and
• That the teacher assessment was consistent with the actual learner performance.
• Ensuring that each child acquired the defined competencies

The main functions of the AC include overseeing the above and


• Quarterly assessment of the individual learner, in other words, of each child in each classroom;
• Monitoring individual learner performance;
• Facilitating monthly Follow-up Training and Six-monthly Refresher Training for the teachers;

Administrative responsibilities of a Area Coordinator include Baseline survey, inviting application from potential teachers in the community, ensuring continued availability of classroom provision including all learning materials, stationery and books, teacher materials, administering teacher holidays, provision of supply teachers, teacher assessment and reporting. These are meant to take up no more than 20% of the AC's time.