A teacher facilitating a TaRL numeracy activity in Nigeria. (Photo: British Council)

In line with the RISE messaging campaign action of ‘Measure learning reliably, regularly, and relevantly’, we discuss one example of what such learning measurement looks like in the context of Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) in Nigeria.

Learners practice reading in small groups during a TaRL classroom session.  Photo: TaRL Africa

Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, children globally reported poor foundational reading and maths skills. Most children in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, also experienced this learning crisis that worsened due to prolonged school closures and other disruptions to the education system during the pandemic.

By reading this article, you are demonstrating your ability to read. By calculating how much change you need when purchasing something at the shop, you draw on your ability to do maths. Text and numbers are everywhere: on newspapers, road signs, advertisements and subtitles in movies, in contractual agreements, bank statements,, and emails from coworkers. Beyond foundational skills’ ability to revolutionalise how you navigate the world, these skills will also allow children to absorb more advanced content within the curriculum. Without this base, they fall behind and never catch up. Despite how integral reading and arithmetic is to experiencing and navigating the world, many children in Nigeria are not acquiring these skills in school.

According to The State of Global Learning Poverty 2022 update, 70 percent of 10-year-old children in low and middle-income countries cannot read a simple text with comprehension. The situation is similarly dire in Nigeria, with many young learners unable to read, write and perform basic numeracy activities. A survey conducted in 2020 by the Nigeria Education Data Survey (NEDS) reported that only 66.8 percent of children aged 12 to 14 could read at least one of three words, and only 67.3 percent of children of the same age group could add single-digit- sums.

The Ministry of Education recently reiterated that it is committed to continually adopting existing and emerging innovations that advance learning. Evidence-based approaches that will accelerate learning of foundational skills, such as Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), are more critical now than ever. The TaRL approach, pioneered by Pratham and evaluated and refined for over 15 years in India in collaboration with Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL),  is an accelerated learning approach that ensures that children catch up on foundational literacy and numeracy before they complete primary school.  Since 2016, TaRL Africa, has been supporting TaRL pilots and scale-ups across over ten countries in Africa. In Nigeria, TaRL Africa has partnered with various governmental and non-governmental actors to support TaRL programmes in seven states, namely Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, and Yobe.

TaRL zeroes in on classroom practices, enabling and motivating teachers to ensure all learners attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Children are assessed using a simple testing tool at the classroom level and then grouped according to their learning level rather than their age or grade, creating an environment where level-appropriate content is quickly learned. For a period of the day, children in middle-upper primary focus on foundational skills using a specific accelerated learning methodology, providing children with an opportunity to catch up.

TaRL programmes in Nigeria are embedded within the government system and leverage its human and material resources to foster sustainability and to scale. In collaboration with the government and partners, programmes are designed to ensure cost-effectiveness and strengthen the capacity of government personnel from school to the state level on foundational learning. In Kebbi state, for example, the state government has also committed its financial resources to pilot, sustain and scale up the programmes. TaRL is now being implemented in approximately 2000 schools across the seven states in Nigeria.

Personally, it is very inspiring to see the excitement on children’s faces as they learn using fun and interactive activities and as they make leaps of progress from being able to identify letters only to reading words and short stories within a short period in a TaRL classroom.

To improve learning outcomes in Nigeria and ensure children gain foundational skills, we need collective leadership working together at all levels—in schools, government, and communities to drive foundational learning. Firstly, this commitment needs to be augmented with practical and concrete action and evidence-based plans that advance accelerated learning and recovery of the lost learning time due to COVID-19 school closures.

Secondly, the government must recruit, train and motivate teachers to ensure that all children, including the most marginalized, can access quality learning. The government must support teachers with adequate tools, professional development opportunities, and ongoing mentoring support to deliver targeted instruction so that no child is left behind.

Thirdly, the language of instruction must be brought to the forefront of education policy discussions, as evidence demonstrates that teaching children in a language they use and understand at home has the potential to support the development of foundational skills.

Additionally, the government must increase access to accelerated learning interventions that have been proven to support children in catching up. The TaRL approach has been identified by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel approach as a “good buy” on cost-effective approaches that are improving global learning. The government must  assess learning levels regularly and prioritize teaching the fundamentals to enable all children to reach their full potential and participate in society.

The Pandemic’s Impact

News about COVID-19 sounded strange at the onset but gathered storm quite quickly. I recall speaking to a relative about the pandemic.  He had said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be gone in two weeks. I believe that is what most Nigerians and citizens of other countries had thought as well. Everything went on as usual for our personal lives and work until 19^th March 2020, when we received a federal government directive that schools should be shut by 23^rd March. The directive and imminent school closure was nothing anyone had anticipated.

There were innumerable disruptions to development programmes, including for the Kano Literacy and Mathematics Accelerator (KaLMA), because of the pandemic, and COVID-19’s impacts did not apply any preferential treatments. The KaLMA programme which is aimed at building foundational literacy and numeracy skills of primary 4 to Primary 6 children in Dawakin Tofa and Wudil local government areas in Kano state was designed as an in-school programme and therefore required a functional school environment to be implemented. Given that the central objective for the existence of the programme was to ensure the improvement of foundational skills’ learning outcomes, efforts had to be made to ensure that the school closure was not a deterrent factor.

Key Takeaways

Everyone has had different reactions to the pandemic. Some of the key takeaways over the past year include the following:

Rapid decision-making: The pandemic necessitated swift action. The first decision was implemented within 24 hours: schools had to conduct a rapid mini-midline assessment of as many pupils as possible across the two programme local government areas (LGAs). This was essential to capture any improvements that may have been achieved in about 40 days of implementing KaLMA. Despite the short notice, teachers across 100 schools were able to assess over 10,000 pupils.

Needs assessment is essential: This is a general principle for programme design but was particularly pertinent in these circumstances. The pandemic caused us to dig deeper and more directly into understanding the environments that children live in and how the pupils’ socio-economic conditions would impact continued learning. The financial service sector would call this “KYC – Know Your Customer.” While many organisations were promoting internet-based solutions as favourable remote learning options, our needs assessment conducted through a phone survey clearly highlighted the impracticality of this approach in the programme communities. Thus, the remote learning approach adopted included dissemination of learning content through text messages, automated voice calls, interactive voice response (IVR) platform and radio programmes.

Flexibility in adaptation: Pivoting the programme was essential to the central goal of continuing the improvement of foundational skills. KaLMA was designed for schools, not homes. However, the pandemic reminded us that the home is the first learning environment of every child.  Therefore, it was vital to make a switch to the home, an important learning environment, and involve parents as facilitators in their children’s learning. Designing a home-based learning programme required a complete overhaul of the KaLMA programme – we moved from implementing the TaRL approach as an in-school programme to a community camp model with little time to train the volunteers (parents) as facilitators or the children in adopting “social/physical distancing”. Additionally, the mode of communicating and sharing learning content with children had to be different. Our options included low-tech solutions like text messages and automated voice calls to parents alongside the traditional radio programmes. While these radio programmes gained significant prominence across many states, it has been difficult to estimate the actual reach of these radio programmes and their subsequent impact, however, feedback from pupils and their parents across Kano and neighbouring states provided during a weekly radio call-in programme indicates that the contents have been useful.

It is noteworthy that the flexibility of the programme and its success is attributable to the joint efforts of all the programme partners – Kano State Universal Basic Education Board (Kano SUBEB), Kano Ministry of Education, Sa’adatu Rimi College of Education, the British Council, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

Opportunity to learn new skills: The pandemic has been a stretch for everyone – positive for some and negative for others.  But this experience has also had a bright side for some team members. Given the novelty of the pandemic and the programme pivots, most team members learned and practised new skills. For instance, the content leads had to develop learning activities using 170-character count as a yardstick because it would be sent via a text message. They also had to create radio scripts in rapid succession while working from home with intermittent electricity supply and internet. These new skills are a valuable addition to their CVs!

Overall, I would say that 2020 was an interesting year in a variety of ways. It brought to bear emphasis on adaptive principles for managing education programmes and on varied perspectives of the impact of the pandemic on programme goals and objectives. However, from where I sit, I would say that it has provided additional opportunities for learning!