Enrollment in early childhood education has increased dramatically in Ghana, but the education sector now faces the challenge of ensuring young children learn and develop school readiness skills. This study evaluated the impacts of a scalable, in-service training and coaching program for kindergarten teachers, delivered with and without parental awareness meetings, on teaching practices and children’s learning and development.

Key Findings:

• The in-service teacher training and coaching improved teachers’ use of the play-based kindergarten-specific pedagogy that is specified in Ghana’s national early childhood education curriculum.
• The program led to moderate impacts on teachers’ professional well-being, reducing teacher burnout for all teachers, and teacher turnover in the private sector.
• The teacher-training and coaching improved children’s school readiness, including their early literacy, early numeracy, and social-emotional skills in the first year. One year later, when children moved to their next year of schooling, the impacts on social-emotional development persisted. Two years later, preliminary evidence shows sustained gains in literacy, executive function, and behavioral regulation. There were also persistent positive impacts on both literacy and numeracy outcomes in classrooms with high emotional support and in classrooms where teachers had low burnout levels.
• The parental awareness meetings were not effective in improving children’s outcomes, and alternative approaches to engage parents need to be explored.
• Overall, the results of the in-service teacher training hold promise for improving the quality of education delivered in Ghana’s kindergarten educational system.