21st Century Knowledge and Skills Inclusion in Accelerated Education Models

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Since the 2000 Education for All movement, the global education community saw a dramatic decrease in the number of out-of-school children. However, global school closures due to the 2020 pandemic and the exclusion of girls from school in Afghanistan led to a dramatic increase in children dropping out of school temporarily or permanently (1). The 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report notes that in 2022, 250 million children (18 and younger) were out-of-school; including a 12 million increase in sub-Saharan Africa (1). While external pull-factors such as the pandemic and regime change affects schooling trends, a large influence on children dropping out of school is low quality education. A recent World Bank report on learning poverty suggests that post-pandemic, global levels of ‘learning poverty’ have increased to approximately 70 percent (2). Learning poverty is defined as the percentage of children who are unable to read and understand a simple text by the time they are ten years old. In sub-Saharan Africa, this increases to approximately 86% (2). It is no wonder, then, that if children are not building foundational learning regarding literacy and numeracy, the value of remaining in education, and being able to ‘keep up’ to grade-specific learning standards becomes near impossible, leaving many children and their families/guardians with the decision to drop out of school.

While the exact number is unknown, many Ministries of Education (MoE) include provisions for children who have dropped out of school to catch-up and re-enter at a level that matches their educational knowledge via standardized exams. However, for those who are older than their educational cohorts (e.g. a 16-year-old who operates at a second grade level), they are unlikely to be motivated to re-enter primary school to join a class with other eight year olds. INEE’s Accelerated Education Working Group recently published ‘The case for Accelerated Education’ which outlines the importance of having accelerated and alternate learning pathways available for these out-of-school children (3). This panel will look at how digital literacy and the use of technology contributes to accelerated education programing across multiple country contexts in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Specifically, we will look at: 1) how are accelerated learning centers balancing the draw of online learning tools, the need to develop digital literacy in students and teachers/facilitators, and digital safeguarding considerations; 2) how are discussions around digital inclusion balancing the reality of learning poverty and limited MoE ability to scale-up costly digital interventions; 3) how do accelerated catch-up programs balance the need to focus on foundational learning, digital, and alternative pathways for adolescents who want to learn but are unlikely to transition back to school; and 4) what’s next for accelerated catch-up programs.

This panel will explore multiple cases of accelerated and nonformal education programs. The first presentation will look at one INGO’s global catch-up learning program across ten countries. In this, we will explore the trends in what drives children out-of-school, the variety of accelerated curricula, data on trends re: who is out-of-school, and what is a successful post-accelerated education transition, and engagements with MoE and donors to update curricula to include topics such as digital literacy. The second presentation will highlight a nearly decade-long program in Malawi to develop an alternative accelerated education program and inform updates to the national Complementary Basic Education (CBE) model for out-of-school adolescents. This presenter will also share data from pilot learning centers where technology was integrated, sharing what worked, what didn’t, and how do we use that to define sustainability of technology integration in accelerated education programs. The third presentation will be on a multi-generational catch-up education model in Zambia where out-of-school adolescents and young parents have been supported to build foundational learning skills via an accelerated catch-up model. Unique to this program is that for young parents, the accelerated catch-up model not only builds their individual knowledge and skills, but they are able to apply these through hands-on parenting activities with their children 0-6, building a culture of reading and learning. Finally, our discussant from Somalia will highlight lessons from a large-scale accelerated and nonformal education model, including what are key questions that we are or are not asking about digital inclusion, transition pathways, and how we can and should be working with the MoE to mainstream this work.

(1) 250 million children out-of-school: What you need to know about UNESCO’s latest education data | UNESCO
(2) TheStateOfLearningPoverty-Feb2023Update-03-08-23.pdf (worldbank.org)
(3) AEWG-Accelerated_Education_Brief-screen.pdf (inee.org)

Sub Unit

• Youth Development and Education SIG

Chair

• Amanda Moll, CARE USA

Individual Presentations

• Global models for accelerated education and transition pathways - Amanda Moll, CARE USA

• The development of an alternate accelerated learning pathway in Malawi, and the role of the Ministry of Education - Glory Ngwira, CARE Malawi

• The development of a holistic learning environment for out-of-school adolescents and young parents in Zambia - Brian Phiri, CARE Zambia