This programme has been run for over ten years with great success. This is a 12-18 month deep change programme focused on a particular school, working with the school at all levels, and utilising both team and individual coaching.  The team coaching focuses primarily on the SMT where the objective is to get the leadership team to work more cohesively, and more strategically in giving direction to the school.  This is reinforced by a series of one-on-one coaching sessions with the individual members of the SMT, with the team workshops being interspersed with individual coaching sessions.  In addition, the programme also includes All- Stakeholder Workshops that bring the entire school community together, the purpose of which is to focus on the vision of the school and to identify where there are gaps in the culture of the school.  

Over the years we’ve developed a Monitoring & Evaluation (M & E) tool to inform the deep-change process. We’ve identified 28 areas/elements which characterize a fully-functional and high-performing school. At the start of our programme, the school community rates the school on these 28 areas, and this then establishes a baseline for informing both the team and individual coaching interventions.

At the end of the 12 to 18-month programme, we run the same assessment again which provides a quantitative view of the shift that has taken place in the school.

Since 2008 more than 35 schools and more than 40 000 beneficiaries have benefited from this programme with significant impact on school culture, learner performance, teacher and learner absenteeism and late-coming, inter alia.

At the same time, we recognize that we don’t operate within a school in isolation. Each school operates within the wider system of the educational district.  As funds allow, the District Management Team (DMT) and the Circuit Manager(s) associated with the school(s) are drawn into the programme. This ensures closer and more effective working relationships between the school and the educational district.