Supporting learners in low-resource contexts

Over the past 18 months, as Covid disrupted education across the world, we’ve seen the non-state sector step up and innovate to ensure that students have access to learning resources. As schools reopen, many non-state actors are embedding these innovations into their ongoing educational programmes, building more resilient and sustainable organisations.

Global Schools Forum (GSF) had the pleasure of hosting a panel at T4’s World Education Week that showcased three such programmes to support learners in low-resource contexts. Our panelists from member organisations Building Tomorrow (Uganda), The Citizens Foundation (Pakistan) and United World Schools (Nepal) shared insights that exemplified the innovative spirit of the non-state sector while also demonstrating the critical importance of collaborating with governments to ensure that the most marginalised children have access to quality education.

UGANDA: Supporting governments to respond to the Covid-19 educational crisis
Building Tomorrow's Tomorrow Is Now program strengthens collaboration with government officials to confront the COVID-19 education crisis head-on. By hosting interactive trainings and providing mentorship, Building Tomorrow's technical advisors have empowered district officials to better utilize their resources and leverage their relationships with community members to keep kids learning despite nationwide school closures.

Over the past year the programme has embedded 16 Technical Advisors in 5 local government offices- supporting 62 Sub Counties and Town Councils, who in turn have mobilized over 4,074 community education volunteers. Officials have responded positively to the program, and shared that the training has taught them invaluable skills that they implement on a daily basis in their work.

Rubega Michael, Senior Assistant Secretary for Myanzi Subcounty Local Government, said:

"The TIN program has helped our local government identify the problems with the education system in our sub-counties and make concrete plans for how to address them," says Rita Nagai, a Social Welfare Officer for the Community Development Office in Kassanda, Central Uganda. "One of the most beneficial aspects of the program has been the training sessions. By gathering all of us government officials together and hosting interactive sessions on research skills, data collection, and making detailed work plans, TIN allowed us to articulate our unique roles and responsibilities in order to collaborate effectively and strengthen our performance as a team. Our TIN partnership has allowed us as a government to improve our structures, strengthen our systems, and come together and determine how to mobilize our communities to be engaged in the education process."

NEPAL: Child-friendly and learner-centric radio learning 
When schools shut in April 2020, United World Schools in Nepal launched the Hamro Kakshya radio programme as a way to facilitate continuation of education and to prepare students for a smooth transition back to in-person schooling, while also preventing dropouts and reducing learning gaps. The programme was designed to reach the maximum number of students and ensure that the lack of technological access and expertise did not prevent students living in rural Nepal from receiving quality education.

UWS’ Teaching Fellows created child-friendly, learner-centric content aligned to the Nepali national curriculum for students in Grades 1 - 8. Since the launch of the programme last year, Hamro Kakshya has been broadcast across four different radio stations with over 230 hours of radio content across 550 episodes. The programme has reached over 24,000 students in three districts, with more than 9,000 regular listeners and 14,000 occasional listeners. In a UWS survey, 88% of students reported that they understand the content broadcast and 67% complete the relevant homework.

"The radio program Hamro Kakshya is the best way for me to continue my learning in this challenging time. Although I have to take care of my three sisters and brothers, I sit before the radio every day after completing household chores to listen to Hamro Kakshya."

PAKISTAN: Using curriculum guides to transform public school classrooms 

The Citizens Foundation (TCF), which provides quality education to over 275,000 students across 1,687 schools in Pakistan, has recently adopted 320+ Public-Private Partnership (PPP) schools with over 45,000 learners. TCF aims to transfer its model of delivering quality education to these schools, transforming them into nurturing spaces centered on holistic child development, meaningful learning, and child wellbeing.

TCF’s curriculum design framework uses Teacher Guides that are aimed at (i) transforming traditional, rote-learning based, teacher-centered, low resource public school classrooms into learner-centered, play- and joy-based, nurturing environments, (ii) reducing teacher workload associated with lesson planning, and (iii) building teacher capacity by serving as professional developmental tools. The guides have been designed keeping the tenets of foundational literacy and numeracy, active learning, child wellbeing, and the cultivation of Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Learning skills as the core guiding principles.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, TCF shared truncated versions of its Teacher Guides with partnership schools in Punjab, and provided extensive training to field teams, school leaders, and teachers on how to bring them to life in the classrooms. A majority of teachers using the Guides have attributed an increase in student engagement to the interactive nature of the learning activities, with one teacher even citing an associated improvement in attendance rates, claiming that now students want to come to school as they are “excited to learn using novel activities.” To find out more about the Teaching Guides, click here.

Others have claimed that they now “enjoy teaching more, because, by using the TGs, they get to experience the activities with students, rather than teach to them using only lectures.” Teachers also attributed to the TGs an improvement in their own skills, claiming that they now know “how to plan interactive activities” and are able to “better manage their teaching time and support students in more meaningful ways.” 

There are five key takeaways from these innovations that you can replicate in your own context

• Now, more than ever, it is important to focus on student well-being and not just mitigating learning loss: It is important to ensure that any new innovations or programmes incorporate student’s well-being and socio-emotional learning into the core design. It is so critical to constantly remember who the programme is benefitting and all decisions must reflect their needs and challenges.
• Teachers need to be supported to succeed in the contexts in which they work: The Teacher Guides build teacher skill through a structured approach, gradually increasing familiarity with the pedagogy and reducing the need for supervision.
• Parents and the community need to be continuously engaged: Caregivers are key partners in their children’s education, especially during Covid. UWS broadcast their radio programmes in the morning and evening to fit around parent’s working hours rather than replicating school hours. Building Tomorrow’s programme leverages the power of the community to supplement the work done by the government in ensuring access to education.
• Technology is not always the answer: We have seen significant education innovation emerge from non-state provision in some of the most under-resourced parts of the world. Many of these innovations have been no-tech (such as the Teacher Guides) or low-tech (such as the radio education programme).
• Invest in long-term, collaborative and mutually beneficial partnerships with government: All three innovations demonstrated the importance of partnering with government to ensure build capacity and ensure sustainability of the programmes.

About our contributors

Robert Sekadde is Director of Building Tomorrow’s Thriving Schools Program and leads the organisation’s community-centered initiative aimed at providing primary-age students access to a thriving school.

Neha Raheel is an education professional with teaching, curriculum design, teacher training and research expertise and led the design of the Teacher Guides for TCF’s Partnerships Schools Program. She currently consults for the World Bank on early grade reading instruction.

Surya Karki is the Country Director and Co-Founder of United World Schools in Nepal, leading a team which has developed 40 schools reaching nearly 6,000 children.