There are more Teachers than Teachers

• In Event: Empowerment through Action: Preserving the Teaching Workforce and Indigenous Practices

Proposal

Axium Education is a non-profit organization based in the rural village of Zithulele in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The village is located - from an educational perspective - in a country that is underperforming on international assessment, in comparison to neighboring countries. It is also in one of this country’s worst performing provinces, situated in a former homeland area characterized by severe socioeconomic deprivation, and surrounded by underperforming districts.

To support learners in this area and combat an expected halving of South Africa’s teaching force in the next decade (Gustafsson, 2022), Axium developed the Nobalisa Program. The Nobalisa Program’s goal is for rural children in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa to read in their mother tongue (isiXhosa) by the end of Grade 3. Currently only around 17% of children in rural schools in the province achieve this benchmark. Through Nobalisa, Grade R - 3 learners receive two additional literacy lessons per week as part of the timetabled school day, in which learners are taught by local post-school youth in small groups, using Teaching at the Right Level methodology. According to Early Grade Reading Assessment data, in schools where the Nobalisa Program operates, Grade 3 children outperform their peers in similar schools elsewhere. When the Nobalisa Program is combined with other supports such as teacher coaching, children read at 2-3 times the level elsewhere. While the program currently runs in 16 schools, there is ambition to grow to 50 by the end of 2025.

The Nobalisa Program tackles several key challenges at once: it provides (youth) employment in communities where unemployment can be as high as 80%; and the program introduces young people to classroom teaching through a strong training and coaching program, as well as support for further study. Fundamentally, this approach supports situating power in the community. The role of teacher is expanded to not only mean someone deployed to a school, from a central education department. Instead, teaching becomes more localized, provides employment, and develops skills. This model has wide application to other country contexts where foundational literacy and numeracy attainment is low, where there is a large youth population, and there are challenges with teacher demographics.

This presentation will demonstrate the power of starting at the needs of the community (literacy development, youth employment) and leveraging state incentives (teacher demographics, youth unemployment) to solve these challenges. Additionally, it will explore the research and best practices used to develop the program, such as teach at the right level, after-school intervention, and paraprofessional teaching.

Author

• Melanie Smuts, One World Network of Schools