Teaching at the Right Level in Uganda: Bridging the Gap for young African Refugees

• In Event: Teaching at the Right Level: The power of effective instruction in improving foundational learning skills through contextualization, adaptation, and localization

Proposal

Across the globe the pandemic resulted in school closures with Uganda facing the longest period worldwide – totalling 22 months. These closures have exacerbated an already dismal situation with learning. As per Uwezo 2021, the proportion of children unable to read in Grade 3 increased to 25.1% in 2021 compared to 12.7% in 2018. The overall proportion of non-readers in Grade 3-7 almost doubled from 6.2% in 2018 to 11.6% in 2021. As can be expected, the situation for refugee children was much worse and their vulnerabilities were enhanced further.
Bridging the Gap is a novel intervention created by Young African Refugees for Integral Development (YARID), a refugee-led organization, alongside their international partner Street Child, an international education in emergencies specialist. It is the first and only language learning intervention in Uganda addressing dramatic disengagement, disruption and dropout amongst refugee learners. To date, this programme has reached over 8,000 refugee learners and achieved remarkable results: 90% of learners advanced at least one literacy level; 91% advanced at least one numeracy level and in the most recent cohort, 95% transitioned to formal education. Additionally the most recent cohort showed 95% of learners at the start of the project to be at a beginner level in English with 39% reaching sentence level and 18% reaching paragraph level during the final assessment. The pedagogical approach integrates Mother-Tongue Based Multi-Lingual Education by building a mother-tongue foundation prior to transition to English learning using Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) methodology to advance linguistic confidence and capabilities, continuity of learning, and coping capacities amongst learners.
In this presentation, we will talk about the journey of integration of the TaRL approach in refugee contexts, adaptation including to multiple languages, and the lessons learnt that could inform similar initiatives.

Author

• Elvis Wanume, YARID