The Catch-Up program in Zambia: Transforming literacy and numeracy skills while scaling the Teaching at the Right Level approach

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

Proposal

While the COVID pandemic and related school closures have brought to attention what can be defined globally as a severe “learning crisis”, the situation with children’s learning across the globe has been grim for decades. While it is imperative now, more than ever, to find solutions to this crisis, several governments across the globe have begun the journey to improvement. The Catch Up program by the Ministry of Education in Zambia, based on Pratham’s Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach, is one such example. As the country aims to recover from the pandemic, an even greater effort is needed to ensure every child learns. It is in this context that the Zambia government, supported by VVOB and TaRL Africa, and by multiple international funding partners including UNICEF, USAID, the Lego Foundation and the Belgian government, aims to scale up Catch Up nationwide to ensure improved learning for children across the country. This presentation will explain Catch Up and experiences and learning along the way.
Catch Up is a ministry-led initiative aiming to transform literacy and numeracy skills for learners in the Zambian school system using the TaRL approach. Launched in Zambia as an 80-school pilot with support from USAID and UNICEF, in partnership with VVOB and TaRL Africa, the initiative has grown to almost half of the primary schools in the country by 2023. Careful design of programming, led by the Ministry, and informed by evidence and experience, has led to the development of a program that is not only delivering results for Zambian children, but is truly led by the government system and is on its way to being integrated into regular practice as the government takes it to scale.
The results speak for themselves in Zambia. In the 2021 academic year, even as scale increased, the proportion of learners able to read simple paragraphs increased from 33% at baseline to 52% at endline, while those able to perform simple subtraction increased from 27% at baseline to 47% at endline during the two-term implementation period. At the other end, there was a 22 percentage point decrease in the proportion of learners who could not read words in their local language and a 13 percentage point decrease in the proportion of learners who could not perform subtraction.
The presentation will explain the Zambian Catch Up journey while highlighting key decisions and activities that have led to its success. Alongside the other presentations in the session, the Zambian case will explore the aspects of contextualization, adaptation and localization of TaRL, while highlighting the role of various stakeholders along the way. The Zambia example is the first of many examples of successful adaption of TaRL that have taken place in the Sub-Saharan African context. The presentation will also highlight the role of TaRL Africa and other partners in this journey and give a glimpse into TaRL on the continent.

Authors

• Devyani Pershad, TaRL Africa

• Ashleigh Morrell, TaRL Africa