Islamabad
Tahira is originally from London, UK, but is now living in Islamabad, Pakistan. She has an MBA in Management from the UK but became more interested in teaching children literacy skills and decided to change her career path.
Tahira first came across Jolly Phonics in 2004 after doing some research into improving literacy skills; as many of the children were not reading and writing well enough at the school where she was the vice principal. After a year’s teaching of the programme, the children excelled in their literacy skills and since then she has never looked back. In 2010 she became a private tutor focusing entirely on Jolly Phonics and Jolly Grammar and has been using the programme extensively. She has conducted workshops for various private pre-schools and parents in Islamabad including few of the most prestigious schools in the city. She has assisted schools in implementing Jolly Phonics and has also supervised teachers using the programme.
Tahira realised that there was dire need to improve English literacy skills in the government-run schools in Pakistan. Having already experienced the immense benefit of the programme first hand at various private schools, she decided to take the programme to the government and in collaboration with Jolly Learning UK managed to secure an agreement in December 2016 with the KPK provincial government, Pakistan. She is in charge of this programme, where around 25,000 government primary school teachers from 23,000 schools will be trained in Jolly Phonics.
Alongside the programme, Tahira is now working on devising a post-implementation monitoring framework in order to ensure effective monitoring and sustainability of the programme in the provincial government of KPK, Pakistan.