Tchitchao High School - Togo

In 2014, a group of nine graduates in Tchitchao, a village in rural northern Togo, refused to accept that upper-secondary education was out of reach for their community. Children were walking kilometres to neighbouring villages to study, and many were dropping out entirely. So the Local Parents Association built a makeshift school, and these young graduates, including Komlan Abalo Braly, volunteered as its first teachers. Three years later, in 2017, the Togolese government recognised their work and hired them as certified teachers. Today, Tchitchao High School serves 600 students aged 10–18 with a faculty of 32, operating in one of Africa's poorest regions, where 69% live below the poverty line, and 82% of children cannot read a simple sentence by age 10.

What makes Tchitchao extraordinary is its teacher-led model of professional development. In 2018, Braly developed "Speech Spark", an innovation combining scripted structured pedagogy (endorsed by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel as the most cost-effective approach to improving learning) with Social-Emotional Learning certified by UNESCO's Mahatma Gandhi Institute. The breakthrough was "Glocal Teacher Training": merging global evidence-based practice with local contextual wisdom through peer learning communities. Every teacher participates in monthly 4-hour collaborative planning, quarterly cross-school peer observations, bi-annual intensive training, and weekly grade-level team meetings.

The results are remarkable. National exam pass rates rose 35% above the regional average. Core faculty turnover since 2017 is zero, against a national average of 40%. Ten founding teachers became Master Trainers and have since trained 200 educators across 20 schools, forming the Level Up Togo Network, now reaching 3,000 students across two regions. Targeted interventions have produced a 33% literacy gain in Grade 7, a 22% rise in maths and science pass rates, and a 65% reduction in classroom disruption. During and after COVID-19, teachers funded hygiene kits and supplies from their own pockets, and 95% of rural girls returned to school.

The school's governance is radically democratic: an elected School Improvement Team controls budgets and hiring, subject teams set curriculum, and every teacher has voting and veto rights. Wellbeing is treated as infrastructure, transparent pay, a staff savings cooperative, subsidised health insurance, monthly check-ins, and capped teaching loads. 95% of staff report job satisfaction; 92% feel valued by leadership.

Recognition has followed. Tchitchao High School became the first-ever UNESCO-Hamdan Prize for Teacher Development winner from Togo (2024). Speech Spark was selected for the HundrED Global Collection 2026 from nearly 800 submissions. Braly won the 2025 Global Education Award for Transformative Pedagogy at the ICTE Conference, and in February 2026 was named a Top 50 Global Teacher Prize finalist, the only and first West Francophone African ever to reach the list, and the only high school teacher invited to the World Summit on Teachers.

Winning the Global Schools Prize would fund a continental scale-up: a regional teacher training centre, a permanent endowment, a French-language digital platform serving 23 Francophone African nations, and cascade training to reach 75,000 students by 2028. Tchitchao is proof that investing in teachers transforms rural futures.