In the month of July, the Promoting Private Schooling in Rural Sindh (PPRS) Project schools received course books published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) as well as bags and flash guides for children. The activity was undertaken across the 10 target districts of Sindh i.e. Thatta, Badin, Mithi, Qamber Shahdadkot, Larkana, Dadu, Khairpur, Umerkot, Sanghar and Shaheed Benazirabad. The course books comprise English, Math, Science, Islamaiat and Social Studies which were handed over to 179 entrepreneurs operating 297 schools from PPRS Project phases 1 and 2. The OUP books distributed were for the curriculums utilized in classes 1, 2 and 3.

To increase the effectiveness of the initiative taken by the PPRS team, the Learning Support Unit has been working in tandem by being involved in designing and conducting trainings for teachers in the usage of the OUP course books. The trainings were concurrently conducted in the 10 districts where PPRS has been operating.

The extensive training program included a 3-day refresher course for Grade 2 and a 6-day orientation for Grade 3 (for the 200 schools in Phase 1); concurrent proceedings for the 100 new schools in Phase 2 comprised 3-day refresher for Grade 1 teachers and 6-day orientation for Grade 2 staff.

A total of 600 teachers participated in which 200 were from PPRS Phase 2 and 400 teachers from PPRS Phase 1. The trainings focused mainly on the areas of Language, Science and Mathematics (Get Ahead Series I, II, III: the course books provided by the Oxford University Press). A total number of 33 trainers took part in the capacity building initiative.

The Learning Support Unit developed the resource material, literature and activities for the training sessions. The training manuals for the refreshers centered on concept review and reinforcement of the teachers. In addition to this, the teacher's Guide Book implemented in the main trainings encompassed specimen unit plans based on appropriate teaching strategies for respective grade levels and book content. This was a 9 day activity held from the 22nd of July till 30th July, 2011.