Lessons from Scaling Teaching at the Right Level in Zambia

• In Event: The Messy Middle of Implementation at Scale

Proposal

The paper explores the scaling trajectory of the Teaching at The Right Level (TaRL) methodology in Zambia (Catch Up) that was adopted by the government as a response to the learning crisis. Since the pilot in 2016, Catch Up (CU) has consistently generated positive effects on foundational skills of Grade 3-5 learners. CU was created as a remedial education program to help learners who have not acquired basic foundational skills to catch up in an accelerated way. The program offers 1 hour per day of remedial learning on numeracy or literacy. The Ministry of Education of Zambia has led the implementation of Catch Up with technical and financial support of cooperative partners (VVOB, TaRL Africa and UNICEF). The program has seen a steady increase in scale and institutionalization since its inception in 2016 when Catch Up was piloted in 2 provinces. Currently, CU reaches 8 of 10 provinces in Zambia and a full country scale is predicted by 2028. The ultimate goal of cooperative partners is to support the Ministry in making the program sustainable so that it can be rolled out without external funding.

The scaling trajectory of the Catch Up program fits into HundrED’s definition of the “messy middle” of implementation (HundrED, 2023), which in this particular case can be divided into three phases: (i) the pilot, (ii) the roll out/implementation, (iii) the institutionalization of the innovation. The first phase involved co-creating a context-appropriate solution with the Ministry of Education (MoE) to address the learning crisis in Zambian schools. The second phase, the support model transformed from crafting and improving the localized design of Catch Up and direct mentoring of teachers at schools to working with zone, district and provincial leaders in delivering the programme. In the third phase, the program has focused on sustainability and institutionalization by integrating the TaRL approach into all levels of the education system.

Two different tools have been used by VVOB and partners to track the level of scalability and institutionalization of Catch Up in Zambia and support the Ministry in their journey of sustaining the program. One of the tools is the Education Scalability Checklist, “an excel-based tool to assess how easy or hard it will be to scale up a particular education initiative; identify opportunities for and constraints to scaling; plan actions to increase the viability for scaling; follow up on how the scalability of the education initiative evolves over time” (VVOB, 2021). Another tool used during this project is the Institutionalization tracker by Brookings which “seeks to measure integration of an education initiative into the existing education system” (Brookings, 2021). The paper explores how these two tools have been used and adapted to the Zambian education context and the particularities of the Catch Up program to strategise a long-term sustainability plan.

This proposal is relevant to CIES as it offers valuable insights to other implementers and education stakeholders on the scaling journey.

Author

• Clara García Millán, VVOB - Education For Development