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TaRL Bootcamp

Florence — Wed, 03 May 2023 06:05:13 +0000

The TaRL Bootcamp is an intensive 10-day training programme offered by Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa, aimed at developing the skills of individuals who have no prior experience with the TaRL methodology or have experience implementing TaRL. This programme is designed specifically for those intending to implement TaRL programmes across the continent. The main objective of the TaRL Bootcamp is to equip participants with the essential knowledge and skills to effectively implement TaRL programmes, which support children in acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills.

The training will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, in July 2023. The exact dates will be shared later.

The course will focus on:

Understand the TaRL methodology.
Implementing the methodology
Understand new concepts on TaRL for example Language Learning from Familiar to Formal (L2F2 )
Train others on the TaRL methodology

Selection Criteria

To be eligible for the TaRL Bootcamp, you must meet the following criteria:

Individual Criteria

For individuals to participate in the basic training, they are expected to:

Be part of an organisation implementing education programs, TaRL included, or an organisation that has shown interest in implementing TaRL on the African continent
Should be able to conduct a TaRL practice classes for a period of 20 days continuously
Have worked in the organisation implementing or planning to implement TaRL for a year
Be based in Sub-Saharan Africa and have plans to implement TaRL programmes in the same region.
Demonstrate a clear plan on how the skills acquired during the training will be utilised

Organisational Criteria

Organisations should meet the following criteria

The organisation should have a TaRL programme or is planning to implement for at least one implementation cycle
The organisation should have a budget and financial resources available for TaRL programming

Location

The training will take place in Nairobi, Kenya. Potential trainees should be able to cover their travel and accommodation costs.

Application process

The application process for the TaRL bootcamp will commence in mid April and remain open until the 15th of May. Only individuals who meet the criteria set for the training will be considered eligible. The application process will be conducted online via an application form that will be available during the designated application period.

Certificate issuance

A certificate will only be issued once an individual has satisfactorily completed all the training sessions. This includes full attendance, demonstrating mastery of the TaRL approach, conducting practice lessons, and submitting all required data and reports.

How to apply

Please fill in the application form by 31st May 2023. Only applications submitted through the form will be accepted.

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One-on-One with TaRL Africa’s Board Chair, Rachel Glennerster

Florence — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 06:50:43 +0000

In your own way, how would you define learning?

I see learning as finding out about the world and having skills that help you achieve more in life. It is simply being able to communicate and discover other things in life.

Why do you think children are not learning?

This is a common problem around the world. Children are going to school but are not able to do simple arithmetic and well as read. There is a more fundamental problem in the way schools are designed. Children who pass exams are deemed as successful and schools are not structured to support those who are falling behind.

Are there implications to not learning foundational skills for children?

Foundational skills are important as they are building blocks to other careers in life. Even if one does not end up in the formal sector careers, one reason to be able to read and write is so that one manages their daily life, they are able to read and write and not cheated into something they don’t understand.

What has been your experience working with governments on the TaRL approach?

We have gone to countries where the governments that are most excited about the approach. In CIV and Zambia, the government is recognizing that children are falling behind and the approach supports learners who are falling behind to catch up. We took a view early on in TaRL Africa about the need to work with governments and that was the way to reach scale.

I focus on the idea that we need to change millions of children’s lives. That is what is exciting about TaRL Africa, it is changing millions of children’s lives and that has been achieved through working closely with governments.

Where do you see TaRL Africa in the next 5 years?

I want to see TaRL in a number of countries, embedded in the system and governments running it on their own and scaling up.

What has been your biggest takeaway from your visit to schools in Côte d’Ivoire?

TaRL is embedded in the government system. This is a key part of the everyday life of mentors, teachers and trainers. It is exciting to see new techniques and approaches and a range of ideas that teachers are familiar with and can hold on to have fun with the children.

If someone tries to understand Rachel, how would you describe yourself?

I see myself as a translator between the academic evidence and the practical implementation on the ground. I try to pull together these two worlds and bring all the studies around the world together and make them practical on the ground, changing lives at scale.

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Adapting a new educational approach to francophone West Africa

Florence — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 13:08:33 +0000

Cross posted from the J-PAL blog.

In francophone West Africa, despite progress made in primary school enrollment rates, students’ learning levels remain low throughout primary school. For example, in Côte d’Ivoire, more than half of students did not reach a “satisfactory” level in reading and almost three in four students did not reach a “satisfactory” level in mathematics at the end of primary school. In Niger, the numbers are even lower—in both reading and math, just over 6 percent of students scored above the “satisfactory” level.

When classes are overcrowded and teachers must cover an ambitious curriculum, only a handful of students can follow the lesson. The majority fall behind without being given the chance to catch up.

Adding to these issues are various language barriers, such as multilingual contexts or a different language of instruction from that spoken by children at home.

Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) is an educational approach to help primary school students who have fallen behind to catch up by targeting instruction to their current learning level. Through TaRL, children are evaluated in basic reading and mathematics and rearranged into groups according to their learning level, rather than their age or grade.

The effectiveness of TaRL has been demonstrated over the past decades through rigorous research done by J-PAL affiliates in partnership with Indian education NGO and TaRL pioneer Pratham.

In light of learning challenges in the region, J-PAL Europe, in partnership with Pratham, the Ministry of National Education of Côte d’Ivoire, and the Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities (TRECC) program launched by the Jacobs Foundation, are currently developing a TaRL pilot in Côte d’Ivoire. TaRL classes will run in fifty schools from September 2018 to March 2019. Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) will conduct an independent process evaluation of the pilot to determine its readiness to be implemented at a larger scale.

One challenge in adapting the TaRL approach to Côte d’Ivoire is the country’s high level of language diversity. This is the case nationally, with over seventy languages spoken across the country and within classrooms. In many cases, children have a different native language than their peers or teachers, which makes it difficult to ensure instruction in the language spoken by each child at home.

For this reason, the government has set French as the official language of instruction throughout the country. TaRL has already been implemented in local languages in India, Ghana and Zambia, but has never been implemented in French. J-PAL Europe is working closely with the Ministry of National Education in Côte d’Ivoire and Pratham to adapt TaRL’s teaching and learning materials to the French language.

We’re partnering across disciplines with cognitive scientists and speech therapists who are experts in multilingual learning to better understand how language plays a role in learning, and to ensure that both materials and activities are appropriately translated for learners for whom French may not be their first language.

These collaborations are a result of a longstanding partnership between J-PAL Europe, TRECC, and the Ministry of National Education of Côte d’Ivoire.

In November 2017, four ministry representatives, two local schoolteachers, and staff from TRECC and J-PAL Europe traveled to India to meet Pratham leaders and observe how TaRL was being implemented by Pratham in classrooms in Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

By the end of the six-day trip, we were sitting cross-legged on classroom floors, participating in language learning and role-playing games with students. This learning journey was a critical step in moving the program forward in Cote d’Ivoire. No slide presentation, written report, or conference call can replace the value of speaking face-to-face with students, teachers, and researchers and seeing the program in action.

Starting in March of this year, a J-PAL Europe technical advisor has been working at the ministry’s headquarters in Abidjan to support development and implementation of the TaRL pilot. This advisor will stay at the ministry for an initial period of one year, providing technical and logistical assistance and facilitating close collaboration between partners.

Depending on the results of the process evaluation of the Côte d’Ivoire pilot and funding availability, future plans might include a scale-up of the TaRL program to more schools.

There is also potential to extend TaRL to other French-speaking African countries, like Burkina Faso, Niger, and Senegal, where lessons learned from Côte d’Ivoire may prove particularly useful. Stay tuned to the blog for updates.

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Applying the generalizability framework: Adopting Teaching at the Right Level in Zambia

Florence — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 13:07:31 +0000

Cross–posted from the J-PAL blog.

How can governments learn from evidence generated from randomized evaluations?

Over the last three years, J-PAL Africa has supported the Zambian Ministry of General Education to pilot and scale up the Catch Up Program, with the help of Pratham, Innovations for Poverty Action, UNICEF Zambia, VVOB – education for development, the USAID Zambia Mission, and USAID Development Innovation Ventures. Catch Up is a remedial education program modeled off the effectiveness of the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach but grounded in the Zambian context.

Our support to the Zambian government has been guided by a framework for how evidence can inform policy across contexts, as presented in Bates and Glennerster (2017). The framework describes how to apply evidence from one context to another by using a combination of randomized evaluations, theory, descriptive data, and process monitoring. To guide this process, it puts forward the following questions:

What is the disaggregated theory behind the program?
How strong is the evidence for the required general behavior change?
Do the local conditions hold for the theory to apply?
What is the evidence that the implementation process can be carried out well?

Teaching at the Right Level: Evidence, theory, and generalizable behavior

Several studies conducted by J-PAL affiliated researchers and others over the last twenty years on how to improve learning outcomes shed light on a key generalizable lesson in many contexts: teachers tend to teach to the top of the class.

Given the structure of education systems across many parts of the world, this is unsurprising. Many teachers are confronted with classes comprised of students with a wide variety of learning needs, dense and ambitious curricula, and high-stakes primary school leaving exams, which incentivize teachers to move at the pace of the fastest learners.

Teaching at the Right Level, an approach pioneered by Indian NGO Pratham, targets the root of this behavior. The approach groups children by homogenous learning needs; dedicates time to building basic skills rather than focusing solely on the curriculum; and regularly assesses student performance, rather than relying only on end-of-year exams.

Over the last 15 years, together Pratham and J-PAL have rigorously tested TaRL’s underlying theory of change through six randomized evaluations in India and a growing body of research in Africa, which find that when TaRL is successfully implemented, learning outcomes improve.

Catch Up: Context matters

Teaching at the Right Level is not an intervention that can be applied universally. Rather, it is an approach for working with education systems to help them adjust more flexibly to children’s needs.

Several important conditions existed in Zambia that allowed TaRL to take root:

Zambia had a clear need for the program. Zambia ranked last in the 2011 Southern and East Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ) in numeracy and tied last with Malawi in literacy.
Learning levels within each classroom are varied, and students have little recourse to learn basic skills if they have not mastered them in the foundational years.
Education stakeholders were candid in their acknowledgment of the problem of basic skills and were open to thinking about solutions from other countries.

With support from J-PAL, the ministry chose three different evidence-based implementation models to pilot in the country.

While the evidence on TaRL is strong, it also shows how implementation failures lead to reduced impact. Before fully rolling out the program, the partner team supported the ministry to test whether the implementation could work effectively and sustainably in this new context. This work included:

Piloting in 80 schools, with monitoring by government officials and independent monitors,
Developing a data collection system and helping leaders react to this data, and
Building a system of review meetings into the approach.

Given the demonstrated need for a basic skills intervention and the pilot’s implementation success, the ministry committed to scaling Catch Up to 1,800 schools by 2020. The scale-up plan includes options for iterative learning to ensure the program maintains effectiveness at scale and continues to improve over time.

Interest in Teaching at the Right Level continues to grow throughout Africa. From September 26-27, 2018, governments and organizations from across Africa interested or implementing TaRL-inspired interventions will attend a J-PAL and Pratham-hosted Teaching at the Right Level conference for the launch of the new TaRL website. The website will house useful implementation focused resources, as well as information on upcoming TaRL events and will provide a platform for those interested in TaRL to engage. The conference will provide an opportunity for the TaRL Community of Practice to share implementation lessons, strengthen design, and more effectively collaborate.

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Release: J-PAL and Pratham awarded philanthropic funding toward education systems change

Florence — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 13:02:15 +0000

New Teaching at the Right Level initiative to support over three million primary school students in Africa with evidence-backed approach

Reposted from the J-PAL website. Contact: Eliza Keller, ekeller@povertyactionlab.org, (+001) 617-324-5991.

On January 15, Co-Impact, a global philanthropic collaborative for systems change, announced a commitment of US$80 million and technical support to five initiatives with proven systems changing strategies in education, health, and economic opportunity. Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa, led jointly by MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and the Indian NGO Pratham, was selected as one of the five initiatives receiving funding under this commitment. TaRL Africa was selected after rigorous assessment from an initial pool of over 250 initiatives.

Despite progress worldwide in school enrollment, millions of children in schools across Africa are not acquiring basic reading and arithmetic skills. The Co-Impact grant will support J-PAL’s Policy team and Pratham in working with governments and their partners to scale up the Teaching at the Right Level approach in multiple countries across Africa.This complements a burgeoning movement of players and programs in Africa committed to addressing the learning crisis through TaRL.

Pioneered by Pratham, TaRL is based on several key elements at the classroom level:

(1) Using a simple tool, children are assessed on their ability to read and do arithmetic.
(2) Then, children are grouped for instruction by level, rather than by grade. For a few hours per day the focus is on building foundational skills through activities and materials appropriate for each group.
(3) As children progress in reading and arithmetic, they move into the next learning group and continue to grow.

Shifting from “schooling for all” to “learning for all” also requires critical systems-level support. This includes working with stakeholders to adjust the approach to local contexts, developing and supporting a cadre of mentors, and continually assessing basic skills and empowering government officials and teachers to act on this data.

Since 2001 J-PAL-affiliated researchers have tested the TaRL approach through rigorous impact evaluations. Six randomized evaluations in India over the past two decades and a growing body of research in Africa have shown that TaRL has led to some of the largest and cost-effective learning gains of any primary education program evaluated.For example, in a randomized evaluation in Haryana, India, the TaRL approach implemented by government school teachers led to significant improvements in reading, with the largest gains made by children who were furthest behind.

The five-year Co-Impact grant enables the J-PAL/Pratham team to continue to support the scale-up of TaRL and reach at least three million students—and potentially millions more in the future. J-PAL and Pratham will set up a new initiative, TaRL Africa, with full-time staff based in South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Zambia, and other countries in the region.

J-PAL, Pratham, and TaRL Africa partners hope that Co-Impact’s rigorous assessment and significant pledge of support will encourage further philanthropic, international donor and government investments in TaRL.

Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham, said,

“Using Teaching at the Right Level, we have helped millions of children to read and to do basic math in India. Together with J-PAL, we are excited to have the opportunity to work in Africa with many partners. Foundational skills can transform a child’s life and unlock their potential to do so much more in education and in life. We are grateful for Co-Impact’s support for this partnership.”

Iqbal Dhaliwal, Executive Director of J-PAL, said,

“This grant represents the critical importance of using evidence from rigorous impact evaluations to drive decision-making. Our partnership with Pratham is based on innovation, learning, and a unifying vision—shared with Co-Impact—of creating systems-level change. Through investing in rigorous research and evidence-backed approaches, we can disrupt the status quo and transform lives. We have a lot of work ahead of us and are putting together an outstanding team to lead and execute this exciting initiative.”

The TaRL Africa initiative will work with governments, local schools and NGOs, donors, and supporters to develop the foundations essential for lifelong learning, opening doors for the next generation of global citizens.

For more information about Teaching at the Right Level and to learn how to become a partner, visit www.teachingattherightlevel.org. For more information about J-PAL, visit www.povertyactionlab.org. For more information about Pratham, visit www.pratham.org.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center based at the Masachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 170 affiliated professors at universities around the world, J-PAL draws on results from randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.

We build partnerships with governments, NGOs, donors, and others to share this knowledge, scale up effective programs, and advance evidence-informed decision-making. J-PAL was launched at the MIT in 2003 and has regional centers in Africa, Europe, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Pratham is an innovative learning organization. Set up almost 25 years ago, Pratham believes that every child should be in school and learning well. Pratham means ‘first’ or “primary” in Sanskrit. As one of the largest non-governmental organizations in the country, Pratham facilitates India’s well-known Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) exercise, which has been providing estimates of reading and arithmetic skills every year for every rural district in India since 2005.

For the past two decades and more, Pratham has focused on high-quality, low-cost learning improvement interventions that help millions of children progress and thrive. Working directly with communities and schools, Pratham reaches close to a million children every year. Working in partnership with state governments, Pratham is able to contribute to the learning improvement of several million children annually.

Useful links:

Release: Co-Impact announces $80 million in grants aimed at improving the lives of 9 million people in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America
J-PAL case study: Teaching at the right level to improve learning
Teaching at the Right Level home page
Teaching at the Right Level case studies from Botswana, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, and Zambia

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Reflections from the 2019 TaRL Workshop: learning about a child-centred education approach

Florence — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 12:26:23 +0000

From 9-18 September, Young 1ove and TaRL Africa hosted participants from organisations across Africa for a TaRL learning journey and workshop in Gaborone, Botswana. Lindi Strydom from South African-based organisation, Community Action Partnership (CAP) reflects on her experience at the Workshop.

In September, representatives from all over Africa attended an 8-day Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) workshop in Botswana, with one common interest: To learn about an exciting evidence-backed remedial education programme designed to help learners acquire basic reading and mathematics skills.

In South Africa, our school drop-out rate is extremely high. For every 100 learners entering Grade 1, half drop out, 40 will pass Matric (South Africa’s high school leaving examination), and only 12 will be accepted into a higher education institution. The overall dropout rate for schools in our local community is 54% and I strongly believe that the lack of basic reading and mathematics skills contributes greatly to this problem. Thus, learning more about a simple, adaptable and learner-centred solution was my personal motivation for attending the TaRL workshop.

The week kicked off with a Learning Journey experience hosted by Young 1ove; a young, dynamic and energetic NGO based in Botswana that implements health and education programmes. They set the tone for the week with fun and interactive ‘getting to know each other’ icebreakers and energisers, and took us to a local school where we could see the programme in action. The learners were grouped according to their mathematics learning level to form three classes (Class One: addition and subtraction, Class Two: multiplication, and Class Three: division). Each class was led by a Young 1ove facilitator, who conducted fun activities such as the ‘bundles and sticks’ activity , and to encourage learner participation everyone would ‘snap’ their fingers as a way of applauding. I was amazed at how engaged learners were at all times and how this uncomplicated method truly made them grasp the concepts of the different operations. This was a huge highlight and it was only the beginning of the week!

The following day, the TaRL workshop commenced with presentations by the TaRL Africa team, a joint partnership between Pratham and J-PAL. The team did a wonderful job delivering carefully planned and engaging activities. During the week we learned about the TaRL approach for Literacy and Mathematics which, at the classroom level, can be broken down into 3 main components:

Learners are evaluated with a quick and easy-to-use assessment tool.
Learners are grouped according to their level of understanding and not their grade or age.
Learners are taught basic reading and mathematics skills through fun and engaging, level-appropriate activities that are culturally relevant.

We also gained an understanding of where and why TaRL was born, how it continuously evolved through randomised evaluations, how it can be modelled to fit different contexts, what is needed to create a scalable and sustainable model, and finally how to ensure it will be successful.

What stood out was how incredibly simple but exceptionally efficient this programme is if it is implemented correctly to fit the local context. Sharing their TaRL success story were members of the Ministry of General Education from Zambia, who joined us at the workshop. Zambia placed last in 2011 Southern and East Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ) assessment, for both reading and mathematics. In 2015, J-PAL Africa approached them with compelling research on a programme called TaRL – government wasted no time to get on board – next year the programme will be scaled up to 1800 schools.

Similarly, in South Africa, results from the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS) assessments showed that 83% of grade 5 learners were unable to do basic mathematics (adding and subtracting whole numbers) and 78% of grade 4 learners were unable to read with meaning. South Africa was the lowest-performing country out of 50 in both assessments, failing to reach even the lowest benchmark.

To approach this problem we, as a non-profit company known as Community Action Partnership (CAP) and based in the rural Western Cape town, Swellendam, are interested in piloting a 3-year adapted Learning Camp Model at all our local schools, reaching just below 40,000 learners. This model will entail a 40-day burst of after school instruction for 1.5 to 2 hours with regular assessment of learner performance. Our vision is to establish real sustainable and scalable change and to achieve this we will eventually partner with the government.

Having had the opportunity to be a part of this workshop and meeting so many different people from all over Africa, sharing stories and ideas, and learning from each other has allowed us to gain a new perspective on what is possible and how to combat problems that seem almost impossible to solve. How do you eat an elephant? One TaRL bite at a time!

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TaRL Africa Webinar Series 2020

Florence — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 06:42:34 +0000

Throughout 2020, TaRL Africa will host a series of webinars covering topics related to foundational skills education. The first webinar covered Mathematics Education in Africa: Challenges and Solutions. If you would like to receive webinar reminders, please sign up here.

Some of the topics we hope to cover throughout the year include:

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TaRL Africa Webinar: Engaging Parents and Communities

Florence — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 05:14:15 +0000

On 29 June, at 1pm CAT, TaRL Africa hosted the second webinar for the year, focusing on engaging parents and communities.

During this time, when many children around the world are not able to go to school, organisations and schools across the world are trying to find ways to keep children learning. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of engaging parents and communities in children’s education.

The webinar featured three speakers:

Kunieda Nobuhiro will share experiences from working with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) on community engagement programmes across Africa
Samantha Friedlander from J-PAL Global will share some of the rigorous evidence behind parental engagement
Smitin Brid from Pratham will present on his work on Pratham’s Early Childhood Development programmes in India

Resources and further reading

Webinar slides: Engaging Parents and Communities

Pratham:

Pratham Open School

J-PAL:

What have we learned from randomized evaluations that policymakers, practitioners, and funders can use to improve social programs? J-PAL’s Policy Insights, organized by sector, highlight lessons emerging across multiple studies and the mechanisms that help explain the results. J-PAL’s upcoming policy insight titled “Providing Information to Students and Parents to Improve Learning Outcomes” draws on lessons from 23 randomized evaluations to demonstrate that giving parents and students information about their educational performance or options often increases parental engagement, student effort, or both, leading to improved learning outcomes. Providing information is also typically a low-cost intervention. Please check back in late July, when the insight will be posted here.

JICA:

Hara, M., T. Maruyama, A. Kageyama and N. Kunieda. (Forthcoming). Quality Learning through Community-wide Collaboration: A Methodology to Overcome the “Learning Crisis” in Niger. In M. Nishimura (Ed.). Community Participation with Schools in Developing Countries: Towards Equitable and Inclusive Basic Education for All. New York & London: Routledge.
Kozuka, E., Sawada, Y., & Todo, Y. (2016). “How Can Community Participation ImproveEducational Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from a School-Based Management Project in Burkina Faso”. JICA-RI Working Paper No. 112. Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute.
Kozuka, E. (2018). “Enlightening communities and parents for improving student learning: Evidence from randomized experiment in Niger.” JICA RI Working Paper No.166. Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute.
Kunieda, N., T. Maruyama, A. Kageyama and M. Hara. (Forthcoming). Educational Development through Community-wide Collaboration: How to Establish a Sustainable Community wide Initiative to Improve Education. In Nishimura. op.cit.
Promotional movie of “School for All”
Overview of the “School for All” model
Training material: Revitalizing school management committees
Training material: Improving learning outcomes through community participation
Training material: Utilizing school grants effectively and properly
Training material: Making a greater impact through the “Forum Approach”

This year, TaRL Africa will host a series of webinars on topics in foundational skills education. We will invite a range of education stakeholders to share their research findings, experiences, and lessons. To stay up to date with webinar news, please sign up for the mailing list.

Photo: Samyukta Lakshman, TaRL Africa

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Research and Learning Associate

Florence — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 05:11:47 +0000

Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa seeks a Research and Learning Associate to support the research, learning and evidence generation for the TaRL programme in Nigeria. This role provides an excellent opportunity to be part of a leading evidence-based initiative tackling low learning levels.

The role will be based in Abuja, with frequent travel within Nigeria. The position is suitable to help the selected candidate prepare for graduate-level studies in public-policy research and/or further professional opportunities in impact evaluation.

About Teaching at the Right Level Africa

TaRL Africa is a newly formalised partnership between Education NGO, Pratham, and research centre J-PAL, who have been working together developing cost-effective, scalable literacy and Numeracy interventions for more than 15 years. The fruits of these efforts have been the development of what we now refer to as the TaRL.

The TaRL approach, pioneered by Pratham, helps children develop basic reading and numeracy skills. In TaRL classroom: children are assessed on basic reading and numeracy using a simple tool; grouped by learning level, rather than by grade, for a dedicated time when they focus building foundational skills through activities and materials appropriate for each group. As children progress, they move to the next learning group and continue to grow.

Main Responsibilities:

The Research and Learning Associate will oversee a set of defined research activities for Nigeria’s TaRL programme. This includes working to design and manage research and pilot activities applying quantitative, qualitative and mixed-method approaches.

The Associate’s key responsibilities include:

Working with the research team to brainstorm, scope, select and implement research projects based on research and learning goals.
Scoping, designing and testing research and learning ideas;
- Qualitative and quantitative scoping and assessment
- Designing pilot assessment and monitoring systems.
- Overseeing and supporting pilot implementation including training of stakeholders.
- Training and supervising enumerators on data collection.
- Monitoring pilot process and providing periodic reports.
- Analyzing, reporting and disseminating pilot outcomes.
- Supporting design of potential rigorous evaluations.
Supporting qualitative and quantitative research studies design and roll-out;
- Assisting the research team in developing instruments for each round of data collection.
- Digitizing data collection instruments.
- Training enumerators on data collection instruments.
- Overseeing data collection, and ensuring that it complies with standards for data quality.
- Monitoring the quality of the implementation of interventions.
- Assisting with applications to local and international institutional review boards.
- Writing high-quality documents for the evaluation, including training manuals, process reports and reports of results from the different rounds of data collection.
For research activities requiring support from external survey firms, managing the external survey firms from tendering to project finalization
Working in close collaboration with the research team and partner organizations to track overall progress on the project and ensure adherence to timelines and the project-plan.
Join and contribute to learning team meetings and brainstorming on other TaRL Africa research projects.
Engage internal and external stakeholders.

Creatively communicate research lessons and results with the TaRL community and more broadly (ex. through blogs, podcasts, newsletters, etc.)

Minimum Requirements

A Master’s degree in economics, statistics, education, or a related field.
A minimum of two years of experience working in a similar research-focused position.
Demonstrated experience with data collection platforms and data analysis software, such as Stata or R.
Excellent communication skills in English, including writing, conversing and presenting.
Strong interpersonal skills with cross-cultural teams.
Desire to help improve learning outcomes for students at scale.
Experience working in Nigeria.
Willingness to travel frequently and flexibly.

Advantageous

Hausa language skills
Work authorization to work in Nigeria

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GRiC mainstreams parental engagement in promoting holistic foundational learning in underserved communities of Kenya

Florence — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 05:11:20 +0000

TaRL session at Noosidan Primary School, Kajiado County. Photo: Samwel Mwayi, GRiC

Nashipai is a mother of three children who are students at a primary school in Kajiado, Kenya. She is also a part of the parental engagement programme run by Grassroots Nest for Innovations and Change (GRiC). In this programme, parents are taught to access free digital learning materials using feature phones to supplement learning at home. Nashipai joined the programme reluctantly as she felt that it would be an additional responsibility to her already overwhelming state. However, as her children continually improved their reading skills, she took a keen interest in the intervention. Nashipai is now one of the parents championing the parental engagement programme in Magadi. “I have seen first-hand the improvement of my children in reading. This has motivated me to mobilise other parents to engage with teachers in their children’s learning,” said Nashipai.

Grassroots Nest for Innovations and Change (GRiC), with technical and financial support from TaRL Africa, is implementing the Pamoja Twasoma Project in three sub-counties of Kajiado county. In this Accelerated Learning Program, GRiC supports 486 learners in grades three-five in seven primary schools in Kajiado County using the Language Learning from Familiar to Formal (L2F2) methodology.

The L2F2 methodology uses the local language Maa to introduce literacy skills, making it easier for learners to acquire skills in English. GRiC also supports an additional 1,562 learners in 16 schools in the county through the TaRL English-only methodology. Across all these schools, there is a community-based learning component that incorporates low-cost technology and has mainstreamed parental engagement to support holistic learning. A comparison between the baseline and midline assessments data shows an estimated seven percent reduction in non-readers and a 16 percentage point improvement in the proportion of learners with reading fluency across the 23 schools supported by GRiC in Kajiado County.

Teacher Renson, one of the TaRL teachers at Noosidan Primary School, supported by Patinaai Osim, a GRiC partner in the Mashuuru area of Kajiado, said that they are witnessing increased school visits by parents applauding the new learning approach. “Some of the children who had been seriously struggling are showing renewed confidence, enthusiasm, and remarkable improvement in learning,” he said.

“For GRiC, TaRL Africa has been a reliable thought and technical support partner who has walked with us as we think through and navigate the challenges posed to learning outcomes in the underserved communities, especially during this drought and compacted school calendar period. As we await results from the ongoing endline assessments, we attribute the recorded success to our partnership with TaRL Africa. Through the Pamoja Twasoma project, underserved primary schools are now becoming oases of learning and a clear demonstration of determination and resilience amidst the adversities posed by the harsh environment,” said Wangui Nyaga, Executive Director, GRiC.

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