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’re not learning. Most learners progress through the 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 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 intervention while extending its reach to more schools, districts, and provinces in Zambia so that more teachers can build their knowledge on Teaching at the Right Level and more children can benefit from it.
The overall objective of the project is to build upon and expand targeted, play-based accelerated education interventions to ensure that children in grades 3-5 acquire foundational learning skills.
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Ministry of Education
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TaRL Africa
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World Vision
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Zambia Open Community Schools
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 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 in the TaRL methodology and study its impact on Socio-Emotional Learning skills.
The project also includes a parenting component, engaging with parents and caregivers through awareness activities of learning through play (LtP) at a district and provincial level as well 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.
By the end of the programme
The project also includes a parenting component, engaging with parents and caregivers through awareness activities of learning through play (LtP) at a district and provincial level as well 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.
