Children’s Ability to Learn Improves Dramatically! Data Show Results of Africa’s “School for All

Children’s Ability to Learn Improves Dramatically! Data Show Results of Africa’s “School for All

Parents of children around the world earnestly wish for their children to receive a better education. However, in Africa and other developing countries, 90% of school-aged children are unable to acquire the minimum reading and math skills, a situation known as the “learning crisis. The situation has become even more serious with the closure of schools due to the Corona disaster.

In this context, JICA’s “School for Everyone” project, which works with schools, parents, and local communities to improve the learning environment for children, rather than leaving it up to the government, has dramatically improved the basic academic skills of African children. The project has since been expanded to other countries. The project has now spread to about 70,000 elementary and junior high schools in nine African countries, and the results are attracting worldwide attention.

November 20 is World Children’s Day, established by the United Nations to promote mutual understanding and improve the welfare of the world’s children. With this wish in mind, let us look at the efforts of the “School for All” project together with data.

Supporting Children’s Growth and Learning throughout Local Communities Following the 1990 World Conference on Education for All held in Thailand, the international goal of “Education for All” led African countries to promote free primary education at the initiative of their governments.

In addition, in order to realize school management that reflects the needs of the community, school management committees (similar to an expanded PTA in Japan) consisting of teachers, parents, and local residents were organized in each school to improve the learning environment, but unfortunately they did not function well. Until then, in Africa, priority had been given to elite education to train bureaucrats who would support the government, and there was a sense that schools were for a few wealthy people. In addition, village authorities often served as representatives on school governing committees, which did not ensure transparency and caused distrust among the population.

Therefore, JICA set out to create a school management committee structure that would provide a forum for robust discussions. The committee representatives were democratically elected, and the school activity plan was decided at a community meeting. Not only parents and teachers, but also local residents understand the importance of education, and the entire community supports children’s learning.

This was the beginning of the “School for Everyone” project. The school management committee, which became functional, took the lead in involving the community and improving the educational environment by setting up classrooms and purchasing textbooks and stationery. Since the quality and time of classes were not sufficient, supplementary classes were provided to support children’s learning. As a result, the children’s basic academic skills have improved dramatically.

Remedial Classes Significantly Improve Math and Literacy Skills Let’s take a look at the changes in children’s basic academic skills in graphs, using Niger and Madagascar as examples, where “Schools for All” are being implemented on a million-student scale. Four arithmetic tests and reading and writing tests were administered to children in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands before and after several months of remedial classes.

The four arithmetic tests tested addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, respectively. In all countries, the number of children who could perform the four arithmetic operations increased by an average of 23%.

In the reading and writing test, samples of long and short sentences, words, syllables, and letters were presented to test the extent to which they could read and comprehend. Although comparisons between the two countries cannot be made due to the different lengths of time the remediation was conducted, in both countries there was a significant increase in the number of children who could understand long and short sentences. In Niger, in particular, the number of children at the beginner level, who could not read, dropped dramatically from 33% to 4%.

The “School for All” project has been successful so far. Nobuhiro Kunieda, a JICA international cooperation specialist who has long been involved in promoting the “School for All” project, explains the background behind the project’s success.

The first reason is that the local needs were great, that is, parents, teachers, and local people had a strong desire for their children to receive a better education. And in order to fulfill the wishes of the local community, I believe that the “School for All” project was able to provide concrete solutions tailored to the current situation in Africa.

Although free primary education accelerated in the 2000s and the enrollment rate in Africa gradually increased, improvements in the quality of education failed to keep pace and declined. The quality of education was declining, however, because learning assessments to measure children’s proficiency were not conducted properly, and classes proceeded without a clear understanding of each child’s level of understanding.

Therefore, in the “School for Everyone” project, the school management committee monitored the children’s learning status and supported the introduction of instructional methods within the supplementary classes according to the level of proficiency of the child’s understanding. As a result of such measures as administering tests to assess comprehension of study content and semester by semester, the quality of children’s learning was steadily improved.

Madagascar’s educational model has received worldwide acclaim. “Because I can learn while playing with others, I am able to do the four arithmetic operations, which I was not good at. I want to be a doctor in the future.

“I enjoyed reading the stories. I went home and told my sister what I had learned and we reviewed it together.

These are the voices of children who participated in supplementary classes supported by the “School for All” project at an elementary school in Anaramanga prefecture near the capital this August. It is also clear that the improvement in basic academic skills has further boosted the children’s desire to learn.

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