So, in a bid to improve learning in lower primary [P1 to P3], the ministry of Education and Sports has partnered with War Child Holland, an NGO, to work with the teacher education department to integrate the “Can’t Wait to Learn” digital learning approach in the new teacher training framework, writes YUDAYA NANGONZI.
The innovation comes at a time when children in Uganda are still grappling with low levels of literacy and numeracy – key fundamental skills at an early age. Children abreast with reading, writing, and counting skills easily transition to upper primary and secondary, thus improving learning outcomes.
Almost two years without reopening schools due to Covid-19, the state minister for Primary Education, Dr Joyce Moriku Kaducu, was concerned that more children have greatly declined in reading and writing skills while at home.
“The literacy and numeracy rates are still low in Uganda. This is why the ministry is revising the teacher’s curriculum to have critical content that focuses on improving the two study areas for our children. Considering that children of lower primary have been out of school for long, the “Can’t Wait to Learn” approach is a good alternative for catch-up of lost learning,” Kaducu said.
She made the remarks last week while launching the new digital learning innovation, which has customized Mathematics and English subjects into games and uploaded onto tablets, at Maratatu PS in Kyangwali refugee settlement, Kikuube district.
The new learning approach was developed by the War Child Holland and funded by the Innovative and Inclusive Accelerated Education programme (ECH0-INCLUDE), a humanitarian arm for the European Union targeting refugees and host community children. In Kyangwali, the programme targets 1,000 learners in four primary schools; Maratatu, Nyamiganda, Kagoma, and Rwenyawawa.
Kaducu said teachers can best impact learners on such an innovation when they are well-trained on its digital concept in training institutions. This, she added, will reduce on the huge costs involved in training lower primary teachers before they are posted into schools.
“This is a good innovation but also costly to maintain if teachers are not well-grounded on its application. We are going to pilot this approach in one of our core primary teachers colleges and later scale it up across the country,” she said. Kaducu urged stakeholders including teachers and parents in the pilot project to play their roles effectively for the success of the innovation.
INNOVATION APPROVED
In August last year, the education ministry first piloted the innovation at Nalongo primary school in Luweero where children used it to continue learning at home while schools were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The “Can’t Wait to Learn” innovation has since been approved by the National Curriculum Development Center as fit for use in lower primary and Accelerated Education Programme level one.
As schools gear up for reopening next year, Kaducu said the innovation will also be reintegrated into the new digital curriculum being prepared for pre-primary and primary learners.
“Even if we reopen schools in January 2022, there’s a possibility to run the schools in a way that we keep children at school but also go back home and continue with learning. It is not going to be the usual learning system where holidays are for only playing. This means that we need to refocus our minds on such innovations to continue with learning process,” she said.
According to Kaducu, technology is no longer optional but a necessity. The pandemic has further revealed the need for the education actors to leverage the power of digital solutions to enhance teaching and learning.
The War Child Holland country director, Jan Jaap Kleinrensink, told The Observer that on inception of the programme, most teachers were a bit reluctant to learn because they didn’t appreciate the workings of the application.
“Teachers thought tablets are replacing their jobs which is not the case. Each learner is allocated a tablet and headphones to study at their pace but they still require the guidance of the teacher to monitor their learning and compile progress reports for parents,” Kleinrensink said.
With more learners and teachers on board, Kleinrensink added that supporting only four schools in Kyangwali feels like a drop in the ocean. For the past three years, War Child Holland has been implementing a similar program in refugee settlements of Nakivale, Oruchinga, Kyaka II, Nvepi, Rhino camp, Bidi Bidi, and Parolinya. Kyangwali is the latest addition.
“We need to do a lot more and extend this service to learners but the innovation is cost-intensive in terms of teacher training, buying tablets and installing solar panels [to charge tablets] in rural areas without electricity. For instance, one tablet costs about $100 [about Shs 350,000] yet the refugee settlements comprise many children with limited schools. We are glad that government has picked interest in this projects and it will potentially reach more learners countrywide, not only in refugee settlements,” he said.
Currently, children are grouped to study from community learning centers that have been erected during the lockdown. Kleinrensink said the tablets are also not internet-based ‘because we want the content to be appropriate for the learners.’ For children that cannot read, they watch videos and listen to audio instructions in order to progress to the next stage.
This self-paced approach gives slow learners chance to study based on their own abilities as opposed to the normal classroom environment where teachers tend to move with those who learn fast.
LANGUAGE BARRIER
While the innovation comes in handy, teachers have an uphill task to translate the English content for learners in their local languages. As of February 2021, statistics from the Office of the Prime Minister indicated that there are 121,974 refugees in Kyangwali mainly from DR Congo, South Sudan and Rwanda.
In Congo and Rwanda, for instance, children were being taught in French while in Uganda, teachers are struggling to teach them using the tablets in English language. More children also speak Swahili.
Kleinrensink explained that innovators could not incorporate all languages and, as thus, zeroed on English language since the subject is also a uniform medium of instruction in Uganda’s schools.
At Maratatu PS, the acting head teacher, Joseph Namati, said the school employs community facilitators mainly refugees who are well versed with various languages to work alongside local trained teachers to teach children. Namati said the new learning approach has so far reached 302 learners in the community [128 females and 174 males] aged zero to 17 years. Currently, the school has only 115 tablets in use.
He requested for more tablets to facilitate more than 1,000 targeted beneficiaries that are registered with the school. Before the Covid-19 lockdown, the four-year-old school had at least 7,097 learners, 89 teachers and 15 support staff.
nangonzi@observer.ug