Quality and Sustainable Education for Out of School Children: Experiences of the Speed School Program in Ethiopia

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday IV)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Teacher education

Proposal

Abstract
This paper argues, out of school children in developing nations face multiple obstacles that hinder them from receiving an education. It further argues that in order to address these obstacles it is essential to identify comprehensive approaches capable of addressing not just a single component, but various facets of the problem that prevent marginalized children from attending school. The paper employs descriptive as well as comparative methods of presentation and uses time series data of the program, research reports and official statistics of the Ethiopian government.
The paper focuses on the analysis of the Speed School program and its contribution to integrating marginalized children between 9 and 14 into the formal school system. Locally know as Accelerated Learning for Africa (ALFA), the program employs a student-centered learning model; engages mothers and community members through self-help-groups; and provides support to. Geneva Global has been implementing the program since 2011, using a curriculum that condenses the first three years of primary school into ten-months.
The time-series data collected over the past seven years and the longitudinal research conducted by Sussex University confirmed that the Speed School program performed better than the conventional system in many aspects. Over 75% of former Speed School students who were promoted to government primary schools were attending classes (Sussex 2017) compared to only 53.5% of continuation rate at grade 5 in conventional government schools (MoE 2016). Moreover, less than 1% of Speed School students dropped out, whereas the dropout rate in conventional schools in grade one in 2015/16 was 18% (MoE 2016). Another indicator of success is, former Speed School students have higher aspirations to continue beyond primary education compared to government school students. (Sussex 2017). In academics, Speed School students scored 10.4% (Math), 13.5% (Sidama) and 7.4% (English) more points than their government school counterparts. (Sussex 2017).
The paper argues that it is the unique features of the Speed School that contributed to the above statistics, demonstrating the success of the program in regard to impressive academic performance, school survival rate, retention of acquired knowledge and skills, changing community’s life.: These unique attributes are:
1. Speed School employs a comprehensive approach, which involves mothers’ literacy and economic empowerment, school readiness programs for children aged 4 to 6, capacity strengthening for formal primary school teachers. In short, it adopted an intergenerational learning model involving people from early childhood to adulthood;
2. Speed School gives more emphasis to mother tongue literacy. It allocates 13 hours a week for enhancing children’s reading and comprehension compared to 4 hours’ time allocated in conventional schools;
3. Speed School teaches subjects in an integrated manner so that children easily associate what they learn with the real-life situation;
4. Speed School uses continuous learning assessment with reinforcement. It allows each student to learn as per his/her own pace;
5. Speed School applies a holistic teachers’ training which consists of training, coaching, on-the-job technical enrichment, community of practice, and regular feedback mechanism;

This study will help practitioners of other countries in similar stages of development to adopt the model, customize it to their reality and influence their education systems. Apart from this, it also inspires academia and researchers to conduct more inquiry on how employing integrated and comprehensive educational approaches would enhance the education system in general and for global south education systems in particular.

Author

• Alemayehu Hailu Gebre, Geneva Global