“Whole school” transformations for a 21st century Tanzania

September 27, 2014

By Jennifer Brookland

6 min read

At the turn of the millennium, things were looking down for Tanzanian students. The enthusiastic support for primary school education and literacy that had sparked at independence had been blunted by hunger, drought and economic downturn that funneled money away from schools. Net enrollment rates declined to just 57 percent in 2000.

And then, a comeback. With government programs and policies like the abolishment of primary school fees, coupled with foreign aid in furtherance of the Millennium Development Goals, Tanzania’s education sector was on a major rebound.

Kids were doing better on tests, textbooks and math kits arrived in crates and boxes, teachers were recruited and sent to live where perhaps they would have just as soon avoided. It worked. By 2007, the UN reported Tanzania’s net primary school enrollment had just about doubled.

But it was one of the worst things that could have happened.

The high enrollment rates nationwide now mask a major problem. With so many kids in falling-apart schools, with few books and fewer teachers, the fact that students go to class does not mean they are learning.

In 2013, only 5 percent of Tanzanian first graders could pass a Swahili test, according to a report by Uwezo, an East African civil society group that monitors educational achievement. Despite their diligent attendance and best hopes, low-quality education is setting these kids up for failure: the same report reveals only 35 percent of Tanzanian children aged 10 to 16 can pass a literacy test in English—the language of instruction in secondary school.

“It’s very, very painful if your kid went to school for seven years consecutively and, leave aside all other kinds of knowledge, he or she cannot read and write,” says Felix Mbogella, the deputy chief of the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program, also known as TZ21, a program that works to improve learning outcomes in Tanzanian primary schools.

The program, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented almost exclusively by Tanzanian employees of Creative Associates International, operates in 900 schools in Zanzibar and the Mtwara region.

Winning against illiteracy on multiple fronts

While the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program cannot reduce class sizes, Mbogella lists the ways the project chips away at the abysmal performance of too many young students. It’s taking a “whole school approach”—improving learning outcomes by addressing students, teachers, schools and even communities.

The program has refurbished schools, partnered with a local children’s book publisher to get more grade-level storybooks into classrooms and trained school management committees on how to support development activities like building latrines or organizing reading fairs.

It connected the schools with the world by bringing in computers and incorporating e-content into lessons—changing the way school had been taught for decades, maybe centuries.

“Our classrooms were classical African classrooms,” says Mbogella. “Benches, kids and teacher, blackboard and chalk. And now that has changed. Our classrooms are very engaging. You find lots of pictures, words, alphabets, games…”

One of Mbogella’s favorite ways to describe how school here used to be is “chalk and talk.” There was no singing, no moving around, no group work, no games. It was the classroom of his childhood and one he doesn’t remember particularly fondly.

With a major focus on teachers, the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program worked to make the classroom environment completely different from the school rooms of last century’s Tanzania.

It showed teachers how to really engage students by changing up activities, moving around the classroom, breaking them up into groups and soliciting their creative input for crafting teaching aids.

“There is an empowerment of teachers to be creative educationists, not just to manage kids and shoe them and leave them quiet,” says Renuka Pillay, the program’s Chief of Party, describing the sounds and scenes of children actively participating in learning activities in their classes.

To directly impact literacy, the program also familiarized teachers with a five-step approach to teaching reading that they can attest is working.

The approach leads children through phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension and fluency—importantly: in that order.

“I am very thankful to the project for upgrading our skills with such a holistic approach,” says teaching coach and mentor Cyrprian Ali Ndaka. “Now we are very comfortable with the five reading components and they’re being followed sequentially- and the impact is vividly clear.”

Bringing lessons to life

At Kisiwandui Primary School in Zanzibar, a projector and a white sheet draped over a blackboard are enough to transform what Mbogella would have decried as “chalk and talk” into a lesson kids are excited about.

The teacher walks around the rows of desks with a sisal bag, collecting imaginary food items from each row of uniformed pupils. She is going to Machuri farm, she says. What should she bring? Forty or so second graders throw imaginary items into her bag, smiling as she weaves among them.

Now a little girl with a white head covering walks the basket around to gather gifts from her classmates- apples and cucumbers. Songs and clapping punctuate the lesson, hands wave in the air. The teacher stands with her arm draped over the student as a video developed by the program plays on the makeshift screen. It shows students in a classroom just like this one playing the same game.

Soon the words they’ve contributed will be used in a phonics lesson. The teacher starts grouping words that start with the same sound: Ua– flour. Uzi– thread. Ubani– incense.

“We were using energy—so much energy—to [teach] things without involving students,” explains Blandina Lucas Ndambalilo, a Teacher Resource Coordinator in Mitengo. With Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program, she says, “Teachers learned how to use the students’ energy and what’s in their own minds. It’s a participatory method. It used to be the teacher was the one giving knowledge to the students. But now it’s the students giving knowledge and the teacher guides them.”

Halima Usi Haji, who teaches second grade at Kisiwandui Primary School, says with the new teaching methods and e-content, children have become more attentive, more curious, and better able to follow the lesson.

Teachers at other schools go even further: they say the new approaches have reduced absenteeism and even dropout.

“If you had seen the schools before and you [saw] the schools now they are quite different,” says Pilli Dumea, the executive secretary of the Children’s Book Project. “There is tremendous, tremendous change. Positive change. The classrooms have become more attractive. They have become lively through the use of electronic devices…There are library corners in the class, which were not there before. So now when you go to those classrooms you know there’s something happening here.”

Learning that lasts

Dumea says children are motivated to learn by the changes they see in their schools. They have increased their interest in reading, too: School librarians in both Zanzibar and Mtwara reported more students are coming to borrow books.

In the past three months, 400 students at Kisiwandui have checked out books, according to librarian Jane Hebron Lazaro. TZ21 also trained librarians on how to manage libraries and track which titles were out—helping schools identify which books to buy.

At Chaume Primary School in rural Mtwara, librarian Tatu Shabani Dalhi says children used to check out between 10 and 12 books each week. Now, she registers 40 a day.

By improving students’ ability to read, it’s clear that their interest in reading is growing as well—a virtuous cycle that TZ21 has encouraged schools to sustain by continuing to support teachers and engage community members.

Mbogella says between April and October of 2013, literacy rates among participants went up 13 percent.

The evidence is preliminary, but it speaks to the success of looking beyond the numbers of kids in school and taking a hard look at what those kids need—across the curriculum, in the whole school and outside of it—to truly learn.

“Just imagine,” says Mbogella. “You have this national challenge where our kids cannot read and write for seven years consecutively. And if you have managed to come up as a team, as partners…with this powerful tool. We have come up with this powerful dose, where for the first time just in five months our kids can decode; our kids can read and write. So that motivates us. That really, really motivates us.”

A quiet glimpse into the world of Swahili storybooks

September 27, 2014

3 min read

The bookshop is dim and hushed, empty just a few minutes after opening time on a Sunday morning. It’s my last day in Tanzania, and what better way to spend a spare hour in Dar es Salaam than with a quiet dip among the shelves of poetry, photobooks and fiction.

Climbing the little staircase down from the second-floor stacks, I hear a noise escape from a back corner. A giggle. Peering through the slats, I see two small children tucked up into their mother’s sides as she reads them a storybook.

Her Kiswahili words are foreign to me, but the scene is familiar. I spent a childhood on my mother’s knee—my sister occupying the other—listening to her read tales with names like “The Mountains of Tibet” and “Pickle Chiffon Pie” until we were old enough to proudly read them to ourselves.

From first to fifth grade, I went to a school where the classrooms were arranged in a circle around a library full of books for us to read there or take home: books formed the literal center of my world.

But during the past week I spent traveling from Dar es Salaam to the islands of Zanzibar and down the coast to overgrown Mtwara, I’ve come to see how rare this morning bookshop scene is. Most children in Tanzania do not have ready access to books at all, let alone age-appropriate reading materials in their own language, festooned with colorful illustrations.

That’s one of the reasons Creative’s Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program involved local publishing company Children’s Book Project in its efforts to get more books into 900 primary schools.

The Children’s Book Project had been publishing children’s books since 1991. But there was still an acute shortage in schools and public libraries, and it shows: illiteracy among students in primary schools remains too high, according to Executive Secretary, Pilli Dumea, who said children are failing tests because they can’t read the questions.

To her, that’s a failure that starts from teacher training, which does not include courses on teaching and supporting reading.

“They take reading as something that can be developed; it can come naturally,” says Dumea. “Well it’s not.”

Research agrees with Dumea: “The ability to read and write does not develop naturally, without careful planning and instruction,” according to U.S. literacy initiative Reading Rockets. “Children need regular and active interactions with print.”

Creative’s program has worked with the Children’s Book Project produce more grade-level books—shorter books with fewer words on each page, and books with text large enough for a teacher to easily read out loud as his or her charges look on.

The Children’s Book Project participated in training aimed at teachers so it could align its books with the same phonics-based reading instruction that has proven effective in improving literacy among primary school students.

It also helped set up reading tents: outdoor spaces strung with published titles and handmade books that students write and illustrate themselves based on stories they’ve read or heard. Children who read here learn that reading is fun, and find encouragement to make it a habit.

In the reading tents I saw in each school I visited, children pulled their favorite stories off the makeshift shelves and sat on plastic mats on the floor, absentmindedly wriggling their bare toes as their fingers traced the new and familiar words.

These young students have the chance to take library books home with them, and the Children’s Book Project is continuously trying to add new titles to its collection of Kiswahili-language offerings. Not all of their parents can read to them like the mother in the bookstore did, but now they can have the pleasure and pride of reading to themselves.

When I leave a store I tend to thank the shopkeeper but as I leave the bookshop this morning I pause for another moment on the stairs, then sneak quietly out the door. Her story is yet unfinished, the children still enjoying the sound of their language on the competent tongue of their mother as it mingles with their laughter.

Tanzanian schools arrive in the digital age

September 27, 2014

By Jennifer Brookland

5 min read

In a wired world filled with phonics apps and online courses, students can access a library of learning tools and content with the swipe of a finger or click of a mouse. For students in Tanzania, unfortunately, the 21st century did not necessarily bring with it a wave of technology.

In a 2007 report on information and communications technology in education, Tanzania’s Ministry of Education acknowledged that “very few schools have computers or Internet access, and most schools also lack electricity.” The digital learning revolution had not yet reached thousands of Tanzanian students.

“It’s very important for us to recognize that Africa cannot and should not be left behind from what is happening globally,” says Renuka Pillay, who leads Creative Associate International’s Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program, which aimed to get technology into Tanzanian schools and classrooms, many of which had never had access to it before.

Pillay’s program is working to change the situation. By bringing technology into schools, the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program gives schools and teachers the tools to function more efficiently, better engage communities in supporting students and reading initiatives and track data on student performance through a newly established information management system that could inform national efforts to boost the country’s unimpressive literacy scores. It is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Learning to teach with technology

Working across 900 primary schools in the Mtwara region and Zanzibar, the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program has encountered some inevitable challenges while incorporating information and communication technology into classrooms for the first time, but it has also generated some creative innovations to boost student achievement.

“Bridge IT” schools, for example, have a laptop and projector for teachers to use e-content and educational videos during lessons. Other schools have full mobile labs—a suite of laptops for hands-on use by three students per computer during lessons.

The program began in 2011 as a technology program—aimed specifically at bringing these teachers and students into the 21^st century. It was later retrofitted to focus on early grade science, math and reading, and the technology piece has stayed. After all, it was already proving to be an invaluable tool for improving literacy.

For some, the link between computers in the classroom and early grade reading is not obvious. But Dr. Edward Kavishe, the director of Kicheko Ltd, an information and communications technology company, remembers things he learned in first grade that were taught in a visual or tactile way.

“If there’s something graphical it attracts them and it sticks. And that’s where technology comes in,” he says. “Because technology has a very powerful way of portraying: graphically, visually, with sound, with motion, and illustrations. And those things will stick to the kid much easier and much quicker and stay for long(er). So that’s where I see technology coming in and having a very, very big impact.”

Kicheko partnered with the program to install and troubleshoot the program’s technology components in all 900 primary schools in Mtwara and Zanzibar.

The two regions faced different challenges. In Zanzibar, the larger problem was overcrowded classrooms: according to Kavishe, the average class has 70 students, and it’s typical to find rooms with 100, even 120 pupils. In Mtwara, underdevelopment and poor infrastructure meant electricity was an issue.

“The ICT component for this project was very significant and very daunting,” says the program’s deputy chief of party in Mtwara, Felix Mbogella.

In both areas, teachers had very little exposure to technology.

“Some of the teachers were not used to this new technology,” says Charles Nonga, Mbogella’s counterpart in Zanzibar. “Some were scared how they could adapt the new machines—especially the computers in the schools.”

Wired for success in reading

The program trained teachers on how to use the technology, and how to incorporate it into their lessons to help students learn to read better and faster. It provided digital literacy training and showed them how to use the computers, projectors and e-content that had been developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.

Once all the work of learning to use the information and communications technology was over, teachers across the board found that using technology in the classroom made teaching much less work for them.

Children were engaged, and attentive. They seemed eager to participate in lessons driven by e-content.

With computers in the classroom, teachers can use videos and incorporate phonics and reading activities like games, skits and songs.

“It is a methodology of ensuring that both the child and the teacher are fully engaged during the sessions,” says Pillay.

Teachers like Mektidis Nguli, who teaches first grade at Mangowela Primary School in Mtwara, say having the technology in the classroom makes it easier to inspire kids. It has even kept more of them in class.

“E-content and videos have indeed helped reduce absenteeism,” Nguli says. “Back in the day it was normal to have more than 10 kids a day missing classes. But now that’s very, very uncommon.”

Mercy Elisha, the head teacher at Mangowela, says the 43 computers her school received through the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program have changed the whole environment.

“Parents are very happy and very engaged now, because some of their kids are learning through computers, and this is a rare opportunity in the African context,” she says.

“Many parents around this area wants to shift their kids from whichever school they were in to come here, just because kids are speaking about learning through games and videos and through computers,” Elisha says. “But not only that. Experience shows that our kids are learning faster than those at other schools.”

Elisha says having the technology has even reduced the number of primary school dropouts.

When school is that much fun and learning is a daily victory, children are motivated to come to class, participate and return. For many Tanzanian children, it’s a whole new universe.

It seems that way to Elisha, too. From the tidy courtyard of her rural school, she announces: “We are now in the digital world.”

Teacher Training, Mentoring and Coaching Brings Learning to Life

September 27, 2014

By Jillian Slutzker

4 min read

The classrooms of primary schools across Tanzania’s southeastern Mtwara region and the islands of Pemba and Unguja in Zanzibar are noisier than they used to be, but students are learning more and learning better. Using innovative tools and engaging teaching methods, freshly trained educators are redefining what learning looks, and sounds, like and, in the process, turning out better-educated kids.

“I hear head teachers telling us about the noises that are coming from classes. To me that’s called an educational buzz because children are learning and those are active learning environments,” says Renuka Pillay, who leads the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Project, also called TZ21.

The project is improving primary education for children in 900 primary schools in the Mtwara region and Zanzibar’s Pemba and Unguja islands by empowering educators to teach reading, math and science more effectively. Working with Tanzania’s Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded program bolsters professional development for teachers through mentoring, peer-to-peer support, teacher learning circles and better training. It is implemented by Creative Associates International.

An education crisis emerges

In a drive to achieve higher rates of primary school enrollment, Tanzania’s Ministry of Education and Vocational Training began offering free primary education in 2002. The surge in enrollment that followed—jumping from only 59 percent of primary-school-aged students enrolled in 2000 to 96 percent in 2010 on the mainland and nearly 80 percent on Zanzibar—overwhelmed a teacher population already struggling to teach critical thinking and foundational science, math and reading skills.

Although Tanzania was filling more classrooms with students eager to learn and seemingly on its way to achieving universal primary education, the quality of instruction lagged behind. Teachers talked, imparting information, and students, for the most part, sat on benches and listened.

But student performance indicated that little learning was actually occurring. In a 2013 study by Uwezo, an East African civil society group that monitors educational achievement, only 53 percent of Tanzanian students over 10 years old could pass a Kiswahili literacy exam, with only 35 percent passing a literacy test in English.

Mtwara, a target region of the program, was one of the most hard-pressed regions in need of an educational reboot.

“Mtwara is one of the underserved regions in the country with very poor infrastructure and overcrowded classrooms,” says Felix Mbogella, deputy chief of party of the project in Mtwara. “We have teachers who have never attended a refresher course or any kind of trainings to sharpen their teaching skills for over 20 years.”

Giving teachers the tools for success

In 27 Teacher Resource Centers in Mtwara and 10 Teacher Centers in Zanzibar, including one national resource center based on the island, primary school teachers receive support from peers and trainers to improve their teaching methods and subject matter knowledge. More than 1,200 teachers in Mtwara and 490 in Zanzibar have been trained as mentors and coaches to date.

The centers’ hands-on training, mentoring and coaching programs focus on techniques that incorporate student engagement and integrate early grade Kiswahili reading across the curriculum in grades one through four.

With previous teaching methods, “teaching was very difficult,” says Blandina Lucas Ndambalilo, a Teaching Resource Center Coordinator in Mitengo in the Mtwara region. Teachers “just used a single technique…and couldn’t identify problems with individual students.”

Using these new approaches, which prioritize and track student progress, Ndambalilo says “the teacher can see what students are missing and where to fill in. We’re now taught to avoid spoon-feeding.”

Coordinators for the Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program observe teachers in action in the classroom to identify gaps and needs in their teaching methods followed by one-on-one discussions with the teachers. This collaborative and individualized approach leads to tailored and effective support for instructors. A cadre of master trainers—teachers and school officials who have been trained as coaches—provide ongoing mentoring to fellow educators.

At the Teacher Resource Centers and Teacher Centers, primary school teachers learn how to effectively manage classrooms full of students with unique learning processes and needs. Trainers provide educators with practical tools for the classroom including incorporating technology and teaching Kiswahili literacy through phonics.

Empowered with these new approaches, teachers are creatively revamping their classroom activities and are noticing a qualitative difference in their work.

“Back in the day it was normal to go in a classroom without the necessary tools to support teaching,” says Mektidis Nguli, a grade one teacher at the Mangowela School in Mtwara. “But now I have access to so many tools….I have so much at my disposal to support my teaching, and teaching therefore is just an enjoyable activity, as opposed to how it was before.”

Witnessing a learning transformation

Teachers are not the only ones feeling a positive change in the school environment. Inside the classrooms, the flurry of student activity displays a much different scene than the one teachers describe before the training program, when tools were limited and knowledge was delivered in a one-way stream from teacher to student.

“Kids now are gathering in groups, playing games in groups, discussing, reading to each other, writing books, singing—in a way that inspires reading,” says Mbogella.

With students more excited by their lessons and more engaged with their teachers, peers and the material, Tanzania is well-positioned to sustain its high rates of primary school enrollment and maximize learning outcomes for its youngest students.

Ali Saher Ali, a parent of a student in a Tanzania 21^st Century Basic Education Program school sees this transformation on a personal level. “As a result of this [program] I can mention that the teachers, they are doing splendid work which should be congratulated, because I can see that result in my son.”

LIBYA: Nascent groups prepare to take on Herculean challenges

September 27, 2014

2 min read

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LIBYA:

Nascent groups prepare to take on Herculean challenges

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Libya’s Revolution ushered in an opportunity for civil society organizations to form, grow and represent their communities. With U.S. State Department support, Creative is working with the leaders of nascent groups to support their efforts to play a substantial role in this country’s developing democracy.

Two important initiatives— the current Community Driven Grants Program and the former the Libyan Voter Ownership and Increasing Civic Engagement (VOICE)—have provided unparalleled support to these transformative civil society organizations.

The following videos provide a look at what these organizations are doing for their communities.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

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CIVIL SOCIETY GOES PINK FOR WOMEN

Taking a stand for women’s health, the Pink Movement is educating Libyan women about breast cancer prevention and awareness. Whether in mosques and health clubs or walking in pink hijabs and carrying pink banners, the movement fights breast cancer head on.

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YOUTH-POWERED CIVIL SOCIETY

Civil society may be new to Libya, but it gaining strength and energy—powered to a large degree by youth. The H2O network is drawing in a generation of civic leaders who are launching on-the-ground campaigns for positive change and, in the process, shifting the perspectives of Libyans on what engaged citizenship looks like.

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FINDING MISSING LOVED ONES & A BIT OF HOPE

Nearly 10,000 Libyans are missing—a direct result of the revolution, ongoing conflict and previous decades of authoritarian rule—leaving family members struggling to find answers and cope with loss. The Mafqood Center provides a safe place for family members of missing persons to get support and work together to address shared legal and social challenges.

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WHAT DELAWARE TAUGHT THESE MENA STUDENTS

What can a student from the Middle East and North Africa region learn in Delaware? This group of students gained skills and knowledge on a U.S. trip that will help them to create the positive change they seek in their own countries.

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STANDING UP FOR POSITIVE CHANGE

Libya’s Revolution was about more than just ousting a dictator. It was a chance for Libyans to stand up for better their society. The Free Generation Movement empowers and mobilizes volunteers to take an active role in creating that positive change.

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NIGERIA: Transforming education in 2 northern states

September 27, 2014

3 min read

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NIGERIA:

Transforming education in 2 northern states

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Northern Nigeria has some of the lowest levels of literacy and highest levels of at-risk youth in the country. Overcrowded public classrooms, poor teaching methods and a lack of access for girls combine to make education a challenge. At the same time, the popular, privately run Qur’anic schools had no curriculum for basic literacy or math.

Creative’s Northern Education Initiative worked with communities, educators and the government to reverse these situations. Three videos and four stories describe the transformation taking place in Bauchi and Sokoto.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]

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TURNING TEACHERS INTO “STARS”

Up to 70 percent of teachers in Nigeria’s Bauchi state were found to be unqualified or were unaware of modern pedagogical techniques. Working with state education officials and teachers, a unique training program was launched that changed classroom learning for thousands of children. It is part of Creative’s Northern Education Initiative.

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INTRODUCING BASIC EDUCATION TO QUR’ANIC SCHOOLS

Millions of school-aged children in Northern Nigeria are not in traditional public schools. Instead, they attend religious schools that teach them verses from the Qur’an. In cooperation with Nigerian officials and Qur’anic school owners, USAID and Creative launched the Northern Education Initiative to provide access to basic education to these children. It has been a success.

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EDUCATION BRINGS A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR GIRLS

Girls in Northern Nigeria have limited or no access to basic education—making them vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and/or poverty. Creative’s Northern Education Initiative worked with communities, parents, NGOs and educators to change the situation through the Adolescent Girls Program. It opened 19 training centers that offered a curriculum that combined marketable skills with basic literacy and math classes.

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LOOKING BEYOND THE WALLS: PROVIDING UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO BASIC EDUCTION IN NIGERIA

A significant number of children across the developing world do not have access to basic education. Unfortunately, many children in these countries drop out prematurely due to poverty, social marginalization and, at times, poor quality education, according to UNESCO.

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GIRLS’ EDUCATION AFFECTS NIGERIA’S FUTURE

Bauchi, Nigeria—The yellow stucco walls of the Adolescent Girls Program Center are decorated with the brightly colored garments of the day’s lessons. Students bend to the task of sewing using foot-peddled machines, developing the skills many will use to earn a living in the not too distant future.

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COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS FORM CORNERSTONE OF NIGERIAN EDUCATION PROJECT

Bauchi, Nigeria—When school principal Edimeh Yakubu Achile visits classrooms at the Imam Malik Islamiyya Primary School, the pupils leap to their feet and offer a greeting. It is tradition here, a way to show their pride.

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IMPROVED METHODS OF TEACHING PRODUCES BETTER, HAPPIER STUDENTS

Bauchi, Nigeria—His open face decorated by the wisp of a salt and pepper beard, Aliyu Shehu looks every bit the teacher he once was. And though he says he was drawn to education from a young age, Shehu, now the Registrar at the College of Education here, can remember a time when such was not the case for many of Nigeria’s teachers.

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Improved Methods of Teaching Produces Better, Happier Students

September 27, 2014

3 min read

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Improved Methods of Teaching Produces Better, Happier Students

By David Snyder

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“Due to a dearth of teachers the quality of teaching went down drastically,” Shehu says of when he started teaching in the 1970’s. “And the federal government also came in with a program for mass production of teachers, which eventually did not produce quite the quality of teachers.”

Recognizing the problems that existed, the U.S. Agency for International Development launched the Northern Education Initiative in 2009.

Designed both to improve the education system in the two northern states of Bauchi and Sokoto and increase access to basic education for vulnerable Nigerian youth, the program was implemented by a consortium of non-governmental organizations headed by Creative Associates International.

Burdened by years of unrest that have weakened their education systems, the states of Bauchi and Sokoto were obvious targets for the program from the outset. While across Nigeria 33 percent of children have never attended school, 52 percent of children in Bauchi and 66 percent in Sokoto fell into that category, leading to extremely high rates of illiteracy.

Poorly qualified and stretched thin, teachers in both states were often facing class sizes of up to 100 students, an impossible burden for any educator, but particularly insurmountable for those with limited teaching skills.

To overcome those shortfalls, the Northern Education Initiative concentrated first on providing teachers with proper teaching methodologies, and second on improving how and what they taught in the classroom.

“During our internship with NEI, our primary education students have been trained [to use] the learning centered approach to teaching, grooming our teachers in activity-centered methodologies in all subject areas,” Shehu says. “In the USAID curriculum, whatever subject you are teaching there is a methodology. So now any subject [taught] in the basic education level has its methodology taught in the College of Education.”

Through the program, 5,685 teachers were trained in new teaching methodologies, the foundation of which was a core of literacy, numeracy, life skills and psychosocial counseling.

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Working with the Ministries

Ayo Oladini, who directed Creative’s Northern Education Initiative, says the program not only collaborated with Education Ministries, but also worked to improve their systems for hiring and monitoring teacher performance.

“We developed the teacher recruitment and deployment policy,” Oladini says. “This is a policy that will help the state in recruiting qualified teachers, screening them, deploying them as appropriate and even moving teachers around from highly concentrated schools where you have more teachers than necessary, surplus teachers, to schools that don’t have enough.”

Bauchi State Education Commissioner Ibrahim Mohammed Aminu says that in compliance with the new policy, authorities began to research the certificates of teachers, inquire about their skills and determine whether they should be hired.

“This was basically as a result of our collaboration and cooperation and interaction with the NEI, where we were able to arrive at this kind of recruitment policy, or recruitment guidelines,” the Education Commission says. “Because we need to take the right person, put him in the right place to do the right job. If we take it that teaching is an outcome job, then definitely, the outcome would be defective.”

As a lifelong educator, Sheshu says he has seen the impact of the project, and knows it is making a difference.

In total, the Northern Education Initiative reached more than 1,422,000 students in both states, resulting in a 33 percent increase in school enrollment. Additionally, 736 vulnerable children were mainstreamed into formal education, another key goal of the project.

A believer in the power of both USAID and the role of education in Nigeria, Shehu says he was not surprised by the dramatic results of the project.

“I never doubted the ability to NEI USAID to make an impact,” Shehu said. “So when I came to learn that NEI has come to Bauchi State I said, ‘Bauchi, you must be blessed. Bauchi must be happy.’”

Michael J. Zamba reported and contributed to writing this article

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Community Partnerships Form Cornerstone of Nigerian Education Project

September 27, 2014

4 min read

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Community Partnerships Form Cornerstone of Nigerian Education Project

By David Snyder

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Bauchi, Nigeria—When school principal Edimeh Yakubu Achile visits classrooms at the Imam Malik Islamiyya Primary School, the pupils leap to their feet and offer a greeting. It is tradition here, a way to show their pride.

Schools like this one are feeling a renewed sense of community as of late, thanks in part to the Northern Nigeria Education Initiative, a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded project implemented by Creative Associates International.

“The students we have in this school are from the community so there is full community participation,” says Achile. “As we are talking, now the community is building a place for us to reuse as a computer room and a school library.”

Selected as one of 200 pilot schools in Bauchi and Sokoto states, the Imam Malik School is just one example of how communities are rallying around their schools.

Launched in 2009 to build up the educational institutions in these two states, the Northern Education Initiative set out to build partnerships at all levels of society to improve schools.

“We created what we call the community coalition,” says Ayo Oladini of Creative, who noted that they also tapped into existing organizations. “We made sure we identified community people and talk to them, interact with them on how to do advocacy, how to be a compassionate community, and we get them on how to build community support.”

By training local school-based management committees—similar to the Parent Teacher Associations in the United States—the initiative has helped to teach community members both how to identify needs at the school level and how to have those needs addressed by local government.

Communities identify gaps

NIG01241407 Abdul Hamid Yahya, Chairman of Community Education Forum, a non-governmental organization that seeks to advocate on behalf of Bauchi’s schools, partnered with the Northern Education Initiative when it started in 2009.

Twenty-four non-profits like the Community Education Forum were identified and then brought together to the program’s goals and methods. With their buy in, the Northern Education Initiative linked the NGOs with state ministries to identify gaps in the existing education system.

“The most important priorities we identified are classroom blocks, retention and enrollment of pupils, furniture, teaching and learning materials and qualified teachers, as well,” the Community Education Forum’s Yahya says.

The Northern Education Initiative helped all parties to collaborate to find resources to address their needs—like the computer center community currently being built at the Imam Malik School, funded by community members and local government.

Community members learned how to read and analyze state education budgets, looking for gaps and resource opportunities.

“It is because of the advance of NEI that annually [officials] will present to us the budget of the State Universal Education Board to us so that we scrutinize and contribute [to it],” says Gingery J. Garba, Chair of the Bauchi State Network for Civil Society Organizations, which represents 380 groups.

By training local NGOs in subjects like bookkeeping, financial management, and program design, the Northern Education Initiative helped these agencies from within, making each a stronger partner for the other NGOs in the network and the Education Ministry.

“It was NEI who taught us how to go and find out from the schools what they [needed], and how to prioritize issues,” Yahya says. “We analyze them…then we start going to advocate to other places where we know they will come to our aid.”

Fostering collaboration

The Imam Malik School is looking to a variety of sources for educational support.

“Today the world is a global village and people are now aware of the need to be computer literate,” says school principal Achile. “Since Imam Malik is a community-based institution, they have decided to contribute that in order to enable our children to be literate.”

The school is also one of 20 schools in Bauchi selected for water and sanitation facilities, built along with a well and hand pump installed by the Women Farmers Advancement Network, a partner in the Northern Education Initiative.

But in many regards, such facilities are only the most visible aspect of the changes that partnerships are creating, says Yahya.

Among those most in need of the aid are orphans and vulnerable children, a main focus of the program. By helping WOFAN and other organizations to identify and care for vulnerable children, the Northern Education Initiative was able to register 16,000 children in either formal or non-formal schools.

These children, often becoming at-risk through the loss of a parent or simply extreme poverty, were exposed to a curriculum that included literacy and math. Among them, more than 5,200 children received vocational training, with most communities taking on the responsibility of feeding and supplying educational materials for these kids, as well as leveraging resources from local governments to support their schooling long-term.

For Yahya and others who learned the value of partnership through the Northern Education Initiative, the lasting impacts of the project are perhaps less visible. Once too timid to approach high-level members of the community or the government to help fund educational needs, Yahya says his training and partnership experiences with NEI have bolstered his confidence and that of the others in his organization.

“With the help of the NEI we are able to meet whoever the person may be,” Yahya says. “It is not that I do it for my own benefit, but for the benefit of the young ones. [They] are the future of our country.”

Michael J. Zamba reported and contributed to writing this article

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Girls’ Education Affects Nigeria’s Future

September 27, 2014

5 min read

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Girls’ Education Affects Nigeria’s Future

By David Snyder

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They are the fortunate ones as millions of other teenage girls receive little or no education, let alone income-generating skills. The reasons are myriad and complex.

“[T]here are some believe within this community that it’s better to educate the boy child than to educate the girl child because the girl child after all will move to somebody’s house and whatever effort you put in there is going to be transferred to that other person’s house,” says Hajiya Larai Hammadu, Director of Child Development for Bauchi State.

She also cites other misconceptions that education should only be for men.

“Our people seem not to understand there is no religion that says you should not train a girl but that’s one of the misconceptions that we met on ground,” Hammadu says.

Still others, too poor to pay even basic school fees, simply cannot afford to send their children to school.

In the northern states of Sokoto and Bauchi—where on average 52 percent and 66 percent of children respectively have never attended a formal school—the task is daunting. For those who do attend school, national figures have girls in classrooms for an average of eight years, while their male counterparts complete an average of 10 years.

The Northern Education Initiative, a four-year project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented in Bauchi and Sokoto by Creative Associates International, worked to change the situation—starting with the communities.

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Community-focused work

From the beginning, the Northern Education Initiative brought together state agencies, nonprofits and community-based organizations to identify barriers to educating girls, developed behavior change campaigns and opened special training centers as part of the Adolescent Girls Program.

“We partnered with 27 non-governmental organizations who were able to not only understand but master the art of providing all the necessary skills or education to these centers,” says Semere Solomon, who developed and oversaw Creative’s Northern Education Initiative.

Organizers knew that it would be an uphill battle, particularly since many of the parents of these girls had little education, held deeply entrenched beliefs or relied on the girls to generate income as street vendors.

The Federation of Muslim Women Associations was one of the 27 NGOs that partnered with the initiative’s Adolescent Girls Program, and its leader recalls the challenges she faced within the community.

“When we started it was a bit difficult because they were saying we wanted to take the girls off the street and deprive them of their livelihoods,” says Fatsume Mohammed. “But slowly, but steadily when the community were involved they do so willingly, and at the moment the enrollment drive at least the girls that graduated are also ambassadors of enrollment.”

The Adolescent Girls Program took off, and Creative opened 19 training centers that offered a curriculum that combined marketable skills with basic literacy and math classes.

Creative’s Solomon says, “These local organizations are based in the district, they are able to work closely with the communities and not only is the success major by the fact that we were able to set up Adolescent Girl Programs but the fact that they have become so popular that the communities started supporting them.”

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Building Skills & Literacy

A primary objective of the Northern Education Initiative was to improve basic education through greater access to classes via non-traditional methods, including these centers.

By combing basic math and literacy classes with vocational skills like sewing, knitting, tailoring, and soap and pomade making, the program provides a solid foundation upon which girls can learn to support themselves.

“When NEI came into being in Bauchi, they even supported girls that have never been to school, and they offered classes for them,” says Miriam Yilila of the RAHAMA Women’s Development Program, which partnered in the initiative. “And those girls have learned basic education and they have learned vocational skills to support themselves.”

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From the Alcaderi Center, one of the 19 AGP training centers established by the Northern Education Initiative since 2009, Mohammed and the staff have graduated 70 girls. At the end of the course, each graduate was provided with a sewing machine that they can use to start their own small business, a critical component to its sustainability.

“We have success stories where graduates get married but continue training other girls to sew, to knit, to generate revenue-generating activities at home instead of letting the younger one go out to hawk,” Mohammed says, referring to the practice of selling goods on the street.

Self-sustaining program

From the moment the Northern Education Initiative started in 2009, it was upfront with its partners: the project would end and that the community organizations would have to continue on their own.

To ensure the long-term sustainability of the project, the Northern Education Initiative provided yearly training for agencies like RAHAMA and FOMWAN in proposal writing, teaching them to access future funding to support their girls’ education activities.

Miriam Yilila says the preparation is essential to her agency’s ability to support the girls.

“Every year in any USAID project you have to write a proposal to win before they will fund you,” Yilila said. “They will increase your capacity [through] all the trainings that they give you.”

As scheduled, the Northern Education Initiative ended in March 2014—with a very successful track record in the states of Bauchi and Sokoto. The Adolescent Girls Program graduated 860 students.

“It’s been very, very successful,” says Bauchi’s Child Development Director. “You know that women, we are the engine of homes of our families. No mother would like to see her child wasted. If these girls have the opportunity to have what it takes to live and survive and be comfortable their children will also be comfortable. They will send their children for school.”

Back at the Adolescent Girls Program center, the girls are wrapping up today’s two-hour session on tailoring. Earnest and eager, they pay careful attention to the instructor, who was trained through the Northern Education Initiative. These girls are the face of a new future in Nigeria, one where girls are valued, appreciated and educated as much as boys.

Michael J. Zamba reported and contributed to the writing of this story.

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Looking beyond the walls: providing universal access to basic education in Nigeria

September 27, 2014

4 min read

NIG01211424

Essential social or economic obligations also prevent children from spending a major part of the day at school. Other circumstances, such as conflict and post-conflict situations, and natural calamities (such as typhoons, floods, earthquakes, etc.) also pose temporary and long term challenges to meeting targets that different countries set for themselves to universalize basic education.

With students facing problems with access to education, it is hard to understand why alternative programs—such as community schools, mobile schools, Qur’anic schools etc.—are not recognized at all as centers of learning by many governments, let alone be supported.

Several developing countries across different continents have made a commitment to achieve Education For All in the 1990 Jomtien Conference. Notwithstanding this declaration, the “conventional” system of educational delivery was not found to be the solution towards providing access to basic education. This conventional system is characterized by the following: A residential and day-time provision; age-graded enrolments; teacher-delivered standard national curricula; six-year cycle; and its almost exclusive focus on urban- and future-oriented knowledge and cognitive competencies.

Since the Jomtien Conference, there has been a growing realization that alternative forms of learning outside the conventional education and training must be explored in order to reach as many children as possible.

Nigeria presents a fascinating example of both the challenges and opportunities regarding access to education.

Home to 177 million people, nearly half the country’s population is aged 14 and younger. Unfortunately, an estimated 33 percent of primary school-age children are not in classrooms, according to UNESCO. The national literacy was estimated at 57 percent in 2004 and some 49 percent of the teaching force was unqualified, according to the National Planning Commission.

Although Nigeria registered some positive developments in providing education, the country still struggles with low enrollment rates among school-age children, dilapidated infrastructure, insufficient basic instructional materials, too many unqualified teachers, weak decision-making channels and a poor relationship between parents and schools.

There are structural challenges confronting Nigeria. Decades of military rule, coupled with a patronage-based political system, have undermined Nigerian governance structures, resulting in flawed democratic processes with a lack of accountability and limited capacity at all levels of government.

Despite Nigeria’s resource wealth, poverty (percent of population living on less than $2 a day) is estimated at 84 percent. The Nigerian National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy attributes this state of affairs to poverty and inequality, a weak public sector, poor economic management and a hostile environment for private sector growth.

Nigeria cannot afford but to diversify its educational delivery system if it is at all to meet the basic education needs of its children.

NIG01211420 Creative Associates International, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, partnered with two state governments to test these alternate models to reach more children with basic education. After four years, the results have been impressive.

In the states of Bauchi and Sokoto, Creative piloted literacy and math classes in Qur’anic schools, which traditionally focused on memorizing passages from the Holy book. The outcomes resulted in over 1876 retrained teachers, in addition to 220 members of parent-teacher and governance organizations who also received training. 16,000 orphans and vulnerable children were provided access to services ranging from education to nutrition and health.

In those two northern states, the pilot project also promoted education for adolescent girls through the creation of specialized learning centers that promoted vocational and basic education. Enrollment among adolescent girls rose by 38 percent.

Simultaneously, the project engaged communities, schools and policymakers in the rigorous effort of identifying system weaknesses and developing their own strategies to improve the institutions. Although not as glamorous as opening new classrooms or celebrating the graduation of a new generation of students, these institutional activities set the foundation for sustainable education.

As we learned in Nigeria, through diversification we can promote and recognize multiple diverse learning needs, multiple arrangements and technologies for “creating learning experiences” and a system-wide framework for accreditation of learning outcomes.

This concept underscores the need to determine which modes of provision can best satisfy particular needs, as well as how the integrated variety of educational provision can be managed. This method of diversification calls for different delivery approaches—such as a flexible timetable, multiple shifts, local teachers (qualified and semi-skilled), multi-grade classes and more. The strategy also engages the private sector, religious organizations, civic society organizations and individuals to partner for education.

Thus, to take each aspect into full consideration, the most effective approach necessitates the use of regular programs and Accelerated Learning Programs. It entails the development of curricular content relevant or responsive to the needs of the beneficiaries while rigorously maintaining standards. It calls for integrating core subjects into the thousands of operational Qur’anic schools’ curriculum. And finally, it presupposes mainstreaming children coming from these schools into the regular education system.

In Nigeria, traditional and religious institutions are more appropriate for agricultural-based, rural communities. The timetable is extremely flexible and allows for each parent to send their child to school at the most convenient period for both the parent and the child. Each child progresses at their own pace and can enroll in the schools at any time of the year, providing it is in session.

The other advantage is that these schools do not charge fees, do not enforce uniforms and do not require transport money. Above all, these schools do not alienate children from their traditional occupations.

Therefore, it is imperative that governments look into all options in view to meet the Millennium Development Goal number 2, which is Achieve Universal Primary Education. There is no other solution but to diversify and to look beyond the four-wall classroom setting.

Semere Solomon is an education expert and Senior Associate in Creative Associates International’s Education Division.

Tanzania: Tanzanian schools arrive in the digital age

September 26, 2014

1 min read

Many schools in rural Tanzania don’t have electricity, let alone access to the internet. For the first time, schools in Mtwara and Zanzibar were hooked up to the outside world, and a host of electronic learning content that made teachers’ jobs easier and students excited to learn.

Tanzania: Making Books A Part Of Life, and Reading A Part Of Success

September 26, 2014

1 min read

Reading is critical to success in school, but in many Tanzanian communities, books are so scarce that people go decades without seeing one. Creative teamed up with the Children’s Book Project to publish more children’s books and get them to schools. And to really fill the gap, they also showed kids and teachers how to make their own.