Teaching at the Right Level in Africa: Creating Pathways to Scale

13 Oct 2025

3 min read

A selection of teaching materials displayed in the classroom

Challenge

Zambia is facing a learning crisis: although ever more learners attend school, many do not learn. Many learners fail to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy skills. These learners nonetheless progress through primary education, and the gap between what learners know and what they are supposed to know based on the grade they are in increases year after year.

While teachers are aware of this, they stick to the curriculum as they lack the time and competences to adapt their teaching to the level of the child. Remedial teaching is needed to provide those learners with an opportunity to catch up.

Goals

Government staff provide effective mentorship and support to teachers and school leaders in government and community schools, so they can assess and teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to grade 3 to 5 learners in the framework of remedial Catch Up lessons.

Project Partners

Approach

The Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach provides grade 3 to 5 children with an opportunity to develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills outside of the regular school hours, as such closing the learning gap. In Zambia, it is pointedly called the ‘Catch Up’ approach.

TaRL/Catch Up is a highly effective remedial teaching methodology. Catch Up results do not only show that significant increases in learning outcomes are possible; they also show that the Ministry of Education is implementing Catch Up better every year.

 TaRL/Catch Up focuses on strengthening the capacity of government staff at the zonal, district and provincial levels to ensure the TaRL approach is infused in the regular activities of both schools and the Ministry of Education.

TaRL/Catch Up has three important pillars:

Capacity development of the Ministry of Education to train, mentor and coach teachers on the TaRL/Catch Up approach; and to train mentors and school leaders so they can support teachers during Catch Up implementation.
Continuous professional development (CPD) trajectories for teachers on the TaRL/Catch Up methodology. 
Evidence on effectiveness: Teachers are trained to assess the level of the learners, so that they can group learners by learning levels. The Catch Up learner assessment is, however, also used more widely to monitor performance by tracking learners’ progress. In the framework of the programme, ministry officials are trained to optimise data usage.

In early 2022, this project was expanded to ensure continued support to 4 Catch Up districts in Northern Province, as well as support to learning labs in Lusaka Province. Another extension includes support for Catch Up in Western Province (selected districts), and costs for conducting a Randomised Control Trial (RCT).

By the end of the programme

The in-service structures of the Ministry of Education in charge of professional development are strengthened to deliver training and support to teachers, mentors and school leaders in the TaRL/Catch Up methodology.
The CPD of teachers, mentors and school leaders is supported. The CPD trajectories consist of:
- training on TaRL methodology and principles
- continuous mentoring support while implementing Catch Up
- coaching, which will increasingly replace continuous mentoring as staff of the in-service structures become more experienced. VVOB will also provide coaching to guide the collection and analysis of assessment data of learners.
The Ministry of Education acts on and commits to the further institutionalisation and nationwide scaling of TaRL/Catch Up.