SSIMPP – Sustainable School Improvement Programme

OPEF 10 Year Strategic Plan is dubbed Sustainable School Improvement Programme – SSIMPP.

Slogan: “Turning Dreams into Reality”

SSIMPP – Sustainable School Improvement Programme is a community-led Optimus Education Foundation public and private partnership initiative for transforming primary and secondary education in Cameroon to enable children and young people to attend and enjoy school, achieve personal and socio-economic development and raise educational standards.

Inequality and lack of resources (financial, human, material, organisational) are, without question, the most serious problems facing education at all levels in the vast majority of African countries in general and Cameroon in particular.

The reality is, more than 85% of educational budget is taken up by salaries of teachers and other education personnel thus leaving government with very little to be spent on key educational inputs such as textbooks, libraries, science laboratories and equipment, let alone ICT infrastructure and capability, classrooms which are often overcrowded in cities and non-existent in many rural communities, qualified teachers, innovative instructional technology and relevant supportive infrastructure such as facilities for sports and other extra-curricular programs; improving extremely poor sanitation conditions and basic health facilities; complete and total lack of emotional, psychological support for pupils made worse by poor nutrition and family circumstances.

Unless and until we tackle the socio-economic difficulties schools and communities face, we will never ever be in a position to provide the quality of education needed to fight extreme poverty, raise aspirations, widen opportunities, equip people with the skills, knowledge, social values and attitude to cope with problems of living and working. Our immediate aim is to raise £100,000 between January 2015 and September 2020, enough to fund the first phase of the SSIMPP – Sustainable School Improvement Programme.

This will involve a cluster of cameroonian rural and urban secondary schools involved in a a number of educational projects for lifelong learning, a local school-community partnership programme designed to optimize existing educational resources and mobilise additional resources for effective school and community improvement through cost effective ICTs.

SSIMPP is designed to equip these schools with the necessary resources and processes to enable children in under-privileged areas in Cameroon achieve their true potential. The idea is to efficiently and effectively combine financial capital with local community expertise and resources for school and community improvement.

In the first phase, we hope to run an effective local school-community partnership designed to equip Cameroonian rural and urban secondary schools with the necessary ICT infrastructure, equipment, resources, training and processes to enable learners, teachers and education managers to achieve their true potential.

The programme will involve building environmentally sustainable classrooms; providing ICT infrastructure, equipment and training for all staff, students and the community; improving the quality of teaching and learning; improving the quality of educational leadership and management; promoting the welfare of pupils, parents and teachers.

SSIMPP has the following overall key strategic aim:

To harness the cooperative/collective spirit of local communities for real improvement in educational standards and training in terms of quality, equity, efficiency and access in all phases and settings to fight poverty.

Specifically this involves

  1. improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools;
  2. improving the quality of leadership, management and governance in order to deliver the best possible outcomes for learners;
  3. building on the power of information and communication technologies to improve the quality of educational provision and training for students, staff and the community (major focus for 2015 – 2020)
  4. building environmentally sustainable classrooms, schools for the 21st century: huge capital investment programme in schools;
  5. promoting and safeguarding the welfare of pupils, teachers and parents.

Click here  to see our projects within the framework of the Sustainable School Improvement Programme