Supporting 68,000+ high school teachers in Ghana using AWS with Playlab

Ghana’s government introduced free enrollment in public high school in 2017, marking a step toward educational equity across the country. Although the policy expanded educational access, it increased class sizes, making it difficult for teachers to provide individualized support to learners with varying needs. Educators also required training in inclusive instruction to help them support diverse classrooms that included learners with disabilities.

Around the same time, Ghana introduced a new curriculum standard to promote critical thinking and skills-based learning. To smooth this transition, the Ministry of Education worked with T-TEL, a technical assistance organization that’s focused on teacher development. But scaling high-quality instructional support remained a challenge. Under 38 percent of teachers met the ministry’s professional competency standards, and educators in rural areas had limited access to professional-development resources. According to data that research institutions collected in 2022, 6.8 percent of teachers employed various instructional strategies to encourage student participation and critical thinking. Additionally, 31.3 percent used age- and grade-appropriate strategies to deliver lessons.

To support teacher development nationwide, the ministry required a scalable solution that it could tailor to Ghana’s educational standards and adapt to meet evolving needs. After evaluating some AI solutions, the ministry selected Playlab, which is built on AWS infrastructure. “When you’re a new business that scales globally, you need reliable cloud infrastructure that can scale with you,” says Yusuf Ahmad, cofounder and CEO of Playlab. “When we evaluated our options, AWS felt like the right one.”

To scale its education solution across Ghana, the nonprofit received support from the AWS Education Equity Initiative to turn learning ideas into reality with access to AWS Cloud technology, AI services, and technical guidance. The Ministry of Education’s experts reviewed Playlab’s AI-powered applications and shared feedback to verify alignment with Ghana’s existing professional-development structure.

During weekly Professional Learning Community sessions, teachers use the applications to create and refine lesson plans, develop assessments, and tailor instruction to students’ needs. Drawing on Ghana’s curriculum, teacher manuals, and assessment frameworks, the applications help educators implement Ghana’s new instructional standards while accelerating lesson preparation. Playlab also developed four student-facing applications that provide personalized academic support to maintain continuity in learning when students are away from school.

The nonprofit implemented Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to build, run, and scale production-ready Kubernetes applications. To manage data, the company uses Amazon Aurora, a serverless, relational database service. For AI inference, Playlab chose Amazon Bedrock, a solution for building generative AI applications and agents.

Gaining access to hundreds of foundation models in Amazon Bedrock, the company can use smaller, lower-latency models that are optimized for low-bandwidth environments. The ministry’s employees can modify prompts, switch models, and review usage data themselves, making the system sustainable and locally owned. “Software becomes another tool that they use to support their teachers,” says Ahmad.

Across 712 public high schools in Ghana, over 68,000 teachers use Playlab’s solution to serve 1.4 million students, including learners with disabilities. Feedback responses from more than 6,000 teachers reflected strong engagement, time savings, and enthusiasm for continued use.

T-TEL’s most recent annual survey showed increases in alignment with national teaching standards. Over 65 percent of the observed teachers used the applications to align learning outcomes with curriculum standards, and more than 60 percent delivered lesson content with subject-specific applications.

According to 2025 data, 31.4 percent of instructors varied instructional strategies to encourage student participation and critical thinking—about a 362 percent increase compared with 2022. In addition, the percentage of teachers who used age- and grade-appropriate strategies to deliver lessons more than doubled to 65.4.

Instead of creating lesson plans, teachers now use AI-generated drafts as a starting point and spend more time discussing instructional practices and classroom implementation. By reducing administrative preparation and strengthening teachers’ understanding of the curriculum, the applications give educators more time to collaborate, adapt instruction, and support diverse learners.

“Teachers expressed gratitude, appreciation, and excitement,” says Teimosa Martin, quality assurance and Africa representative at Playlab. “Built on AWS, these applications are freeing them to do things that are critical to the profession.”