Quality Education: The bigger picture

Over recent months you might have picked up that we have made the important shift from meeting the immediate needs of the children and the infrastructure of the schools to focus on the quality of teaching and learning being offered.

We recognised it as an important part of the schools’ development and our colleague, Dan, moved over to Zambia last year to lead this work. Dan is currently supporting the schools in the teachers’ professional development and helping provide a literacy framework to improve the levels of reading and writing.

Although for us it felt like a natural shift and the next step in our partnership journey with the schools, it is being reflected in what is happening on a wider scale across the globe, particularly within developing nations.

Goal 2 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seeks to, “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course in primary schooling”. 

Encouragingly, primary school enrollment rates have increased substantially in sub-Saharan Africa. However, many experts argue that this push to achieve MDG2 is a major cause for deterioration of quality at all levels of education. There is growing concern that low quality education translates into decreased competitive advantage; basic education is simply not enough to secure a successful future.

There is also evidence that the chances of a child moving through the primary education system and receiving the significant benefits of secondary and higher education have actually worsened since 2000. Increased class sizes and resources being shared amongst more students along with a lack of trained teachers has led to increased absenteeism and drop out; in the least developed countries (which includes Zambia) only 61% of children who begin primary education remain for 4 years.

A recent UNESCO 2013/4 Report, ‘Education for All’, “makes a powerful case for placing education at the heart of the global development agenda after 2015”.  It is widely noted that mere enrolment in primary education is not enough, and that quality education is the key.

So we’re encouraged to keep on moving forward in this area, to see real change in the teaching and learning at the schools we partner with. We know it won’t be a ‘quick fix’ but it’s something we are committed to over these coming years and know it will be something that truly makes a difference. 

Time to reflect...

August brings with it sunshine and a few weeks of quiet. The summer trip has been and gone, our link schools here in the UK are closed for the summer holidays, and our partner schools over in Zambia are shut for August too.

Time to breath, think, reflect and look ahead to the rest of the year.

Today, I was looking back on my recent trip and thinking about the things that stood out to me, the moments that I remember now in the quiet of this month. It’s been interesting (but maybe not surprising if you know me!) to note that these moments all carry the heart of our partnership with the schools in Zambia.

Maybe it’s because I heard the High School Musical song randomly playing when I was in Lusaka last week but I can’t stop “We’re all in this together” going around my in my head! (Apologies that it is now in your head too!)

When Beyond Ourselves began, we wanted to make sure that we worked in partnership with local people, churches and schools in Zambia, that we didn’t “own” anything but that we would support seeing local people’s vision and dreams for their communities become a reality. That together we would see lives changed and communities transformed. We knew it wouldn’t be a healthy relationship if we created a dependency on us; instead we want to walk with the schools as they journey towards self-sustainability in the future.

And so the times that stand out to me over the recent weeks are when I have seen moments of the “future” happening. They are the moments that could perhaps go unnoticed by others but are significant all the same; the steady repayment of a business working loan we gave a few years ago, the free use of a vehicle (plus money for diesel!) for several weeks when the one I was using broke down and gave up; the school and church community working together to repair the fence around a school or to complete the new wall they need without Beyond Ourselves being involved physically or financially, the unprompted offer from one partner school to another to donate their water tank , or to provide the timber the other needs for their new kitchen area…

They are the moments when I can see five years of relationship gives us not only a strength in the present but a shared commitment to the “future”.