Who Stands at the Front of a Classroom

Children do not choose where they are born, a family’s income, or the stability of their community. Yet, these very factors quietly determine the trajectory of their lives long before they can even articulate their dreams.

Across many low-income and fragile contexts, a child’s future is shaped early by forces beyond their control: poverty, insecurity, under-resourced schools, and limited access to quality classroom instruction. And at the center of this reality is one unavoidable truth that learning outcomes rise and fall with the quality of teaching and leadership.

This is why we believe, with all our hearts, who stands at the front of a child’s classroom affects a child’s future.

Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) commits the world to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030. Central to this goal is a clear priority: skilled, supported, and effective teachers. The gap between promise and practice remains stark. Across Africa, research shows that two out of every five teachers in Early Childhood Development (ECD) have no formal training. In Sub-Saharan Africa, learning outcomes paint an even more sobering picture that only two out of ten children can read and understand an age-appropriate story.

These statistics represent millions of children sitting in classrooms every day, present, hopeful, eager, yet not receiving a quality education, which is a basic right. This reality reveals a deep inequality; some children will benefit from well-trained teachers and strong school leadership; many will be robbed of this opportunity because of where they were born or the systems surrounding them.

Teaching Training Together (TTT) was born out of this injustice. From the very beginning, learners have been our heart. We recognised that many teachers in low-income and underserved communities stand at the front of a classroom without foundational training.

Our approach was clear 15 years ago: begin with the person at the front of the classroom, the teacher. TTT focused on equipping teachers with the essentials:

• A grounded understanding of child psychology
• How to plan and structure an effective lesson and school day
• Considering theories around multiple intelligences
• Maximizing techniques to differentiate instruction
• Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy meaningfully
• Designing and using assessment to support learning

These are not advanced or elite concepts. They are the basic building blocks of effective teaching, and yet, they remain inaccessible to many educators.

As we are serious about training teachers, access to professional development cannot be a privilege. TTT maintains a strategic and values-driven decision to make our high-quality training content available at no cost.

We cannot change where children are born and into what circumstances they are raised, but we can train the teacher who will stand at the front of the child’s classroom. Before a teacher teaches a child to read and write and do mathematics, that teacher needs to know the basics of how to teach for students to be successful.

That is why we do what we do.
That is why we will continue.
And that is why we believe, unwaveringly, that no child’s future should depend on whether a teacher may or may NOT be trained.