A version of this story was originally published on UNICEF’s website.

“Now, all of you count five bottle stoppers, take two from that number, give them to your friend and show me how many are left with you,” instructed Catherine as she illustrated her instructions on the blackboard by drawing bottle stopper objects. And in an excited chorus, more than a dozen children simultaneously reciprocated at the top of their voices: “three!”.

Until now, teaching numeracy to children in lower primary school in Sierra Leone has been fraught with challenges due to an absence of children’s workbooks, quality teachers’ guides, and objects used for counting in the classroom.

Additionally, most primary school teachers in the country have not had the opportunity to participate in trainings to develop the skills required to deliver their lessons proficiently so children can understand and participate actively in class to enhance their cognitive development.

To improve this situation, UNICEF Sierra Leone and GPE have supported the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Ministry of Technical and Higher Education and Teaching Service Commission to facilitate a one-week training of over 12,500 teachers of grade 1 children, school quality assurance officers and district officers in every district of the country to effectively deliver and facilitate numeracy lessons.

Additionally, national teacher training and development of grade 1 numeracy materials were also provided through the generous support from the GPE’s “Delivering the Foundations of Learning for All” program.

The program, spanning 2023-2027, is funded by a GPE system capacity grant of US$2.6 million, a GPE system transformation grant of $22.5 million and a GPE Multiplier grant of $15 million, which was triggered by a $10 million contribution from LEGO Foundation and $5 million from Education Above All. The goal of the program is to ensure that foundational learning outcomes are achieved by all students from pre-primary to grade 4.

“Before now, teachers of foundational learning classes delivered numeracy lessons to children without the aid of standardized and updated teachers’ guides to ensure consistency across the board,” said Brima Conteh, master trainer in the program and a lecturer in Mathematics and Computer Science at the Milton Margai Technical University, one of Sierra Leone’s teacher training institutions.

“This is the first time I am receiving this kind of training and before this, we used to write on the blackboard and asked the children to copy without necessarily understanding what they were copying,” said Catherine as she referred to the new teachers’ guide that has been developed to help them deliver their lessons efficiently. “Now, we use pictures so that children could understand and relate with the objects and practice them at home.”

“We also learnt how to teach children to identify physical objects for counting so that they could better understand the lessons and feel confident in the classroom,” added Martha as she went through the rows of benches and tables in the classroom to help them identify and count the objects on their desks.

Both Catherine and Martha were trained in Freetown before the start of the school year in September 2024.

As Catherine and Martha prepared to go home at the end of a busy school day, with a contagious smile, Catherine said: “This training has made me to love my job even more, to the point where I now apply the same method to help my granddaughter at home with her homework.”