Educational attainment in countries of the Lake Chad Basin has been identified as a priority area by policymakers. While access has increased, teaching quality remains a key concern, with teachers managing large class sizes with wide ranging student abilities often with limited access to training and professional development support.

Pedagogic audits and feedback (PAF) has been developed by eBASE Africa as a simple and cost-effective approach to teacher professional development which aims to bridge the gap between teachers’ skills and the wider evidence base on teaching and learning. The approach has been delivered in 40 schools across Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria (Nasarawa State) where the approach has been co-designed and co-implemented with the ministries of education.

Audits and feedback is traditionally used in the health sector and is a quality improvement process which draws on implementation and behavioural science. PAF first of all gathers information about workplace culture, habits, behaviour, and practice. It is then implemented through cycles of self-reporting, lesson observations and feedback on teachers practice alongside audit criteria which has been developed for a specific area of teaching and draws from a systematic review of the evidence. These cycles identify gaps in teachers’ knowledge and barriers for implementing evidence-based approaches which in turn inform the continued professional development offer which forms part of the PAF cycle. The approach encourages teachers to use evidence-informed methods for teaching and provides each teacher with explicit targets and action plans to improve their practice.