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Catch Up Zambia! Sustaining and Scaling
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Challenge
Despite making significant gains toward achieving near-universal access to primary education, Zambia is experiencing a severe learning crisis. Children are in school, but they are not learning. Most learners progress through school without the requisite basic skills to comprehend increasingly more complex subject matter and effectively participate in learning. Teachers too are struggling to adapt their approach to support the children falling behind.
To address the crisis, the Ministry of Education in Zambia is implementing a Catch Up programme - the Zambia iteration of the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach, an accelerated foundational literacy and numeracy intervention that uses playful learning and provides support based on children's learning level rather than their grade level. The programme has demonstrated success but is now at a critical point in its pathway to scaling and sustainability. The Ministry needs technical support to strengthen core elements of the initiative while extending its reach to more schools, districts, and provinces in Zambia so that more teachers can build their knowledge on TaRL and more children can benefit from it.
Goals
The project had 3 main results:
- Learners in 5 provinces (Southern, Eastern, Muchinga, Northern, Lusaka) can catch up on foundational literacy and numeracy skills, thus giving them the chance to thrive in their future learning.
- The project contributes to the institutionalisation of Catch Up in Zambia, by sustaining and increasing the geographical scope of the project, by strengthening the capacity of the MoE and by integrating Catch Up in pre-service teacher education institutes.
- Strengthen the play component in Teaching at the Right Level (Catch Up). Partners in Catch Up (MoE, the LEGO Foundation, TaRL Africa and VVOB) are engaged in a research and learning trajectory on the Learning through Play elements in Catch Up.
Project Partners
Approach
The project has a multi-pronged approach, working closely with the Ministry of Education leadership to strengthen leadership at all administrative levels (provinces, districts, zones and schools), including between the three key directorates (Teacher Education and Specialized Services, Standards and Evaluation and Curriculum) for the programme at the national level.
The project provides direct technical support to the provincial structures in Eastern and Southern Provinces to sustain quality facilitation of the Catch Up programme. In Northern and Muchinga Province, the focus is on strengthening Catch Up in the implementing districts and scaling to the not-yet-covered districts. In Lusaka Province, the project deepens the use of Learning through Play (LtP) in the TaRL methodology and studies its impact on Socio-Emotional Learning skills.
The project also includes a parenting component, engaging with parents and caregivers through awareness activities of LtP at a district and provincial level as well as at a school level through LtP awareness and educational activities. Finally, the project is supporting the Ministry of Education in the development and implementation of a teacher professional development course for preservice institutions. This course will be developed with Chalimbana University, Nkrumah University and UNZA School of Education, and the 12 public teacher education colleges.
The project also enables VVOB to contribute to the LEGO Foundation Play Accelerator’s three main outcomes:
- Learning through play pedagogies are integrated into government in-service primary teacher professional development programmes.
- Teachers develop the knowledge, attitudes, skills and practices to incorporate Learning Through Play pedagogies into their classrooms.
- Stakeholders are effectively engaged to create strong enabling environments for the implementation of Learning Through Play pedagogies.
By the end of the programme
- Learners:
- Catch Up has reached 1,082,600 Grade 3–5 learners across 5 provinces, exceeding the target of 937,513.
- Strong improvements in foundational literacy and numeracy are demonstrated: the proportion of learners able to read a simple paragraph increased from 44% to 65%, and those able to perform two-digit subtraction increased from 41% to 63%, surpassing programme targets.
- Follow-up research further indicated that the programme contributed to meaningful improvements in learners’ confidence, participation, empathy, peer interaction, and sense of belonging through interactive and play-based pedagogy.
- Ministry of Education:
- A national Catch Up Coordinating Committee (CUCC) was established to guide strategy, policy alignment, advocacy, and investment.
- Catch Up was integrated into the SPRINT professional development framework for both in-service and pre-service teacher training.
- Coaching and mentoring systems were strengthened through 2,160 structured support sessions, quarterly assessment review cycles were embedded across 55 districts, and a digital monitoring tool was introduced across all five provinces.
- 1,212 MoE provincial, district, and zonal staff were trained.
- Schools:
- The programme expanded to 3,920 schools across 5 provinces (Eastern, Southern, Muchinga, Northern, Lusaka), directly training 5,597 teachers and education officials and establishing province-wide networks of Ministry Master Trainers.
- Learning Through Play approaches were embedded through structured classroom activities and caregiver engagement initiatives implemented in all supported schools.
- Parents and caregivers:
- 106,432 parents and caregivers were reached, against a target of 54,240.