Cambridge Education: Changing girls' lives in South Sudan

Photo Credit: Ashley Hamer

A new film showcases how UK aid is transforming the lives of a generation of girls in the world’s newest nation.

In South Sudan, conflict and ingrained stigmas surrounding girls’ education are hindering long-term development. Despite insecurity, economic collapse and logistical struggles, the UK aid-funded Girls’ Education South Sudan (GESS) programme is continuing to successfully deliver its aim of educating the country’s poorest and most vulnerable girls, transforming their lives through education.

In the last three years, GESS has reached over 3500 schools, with more than 9000 grants funding classrooms, latrines, books and much more. Over 300,000 cash transfers have been paid to more than 180,000 girls, while two million people have been reached through radio programmes aimed at changing the negative socio-cultural attitudes towards educating girls.

Even during the worsening crisis, GESS has already received reports from more than 2500 schools in 2017 about how cash transfers and grants are helping them to stay open, increase their enrolment numbers and boost attendance rates despite the violent conflict.

“Inspire. Educate. Transform.”, which features girls benefiting from GESS, premiered at the UK Houses of Parliament on 29 March and shows the remarkable progress the programme has made in keeping girls in school and helping them learn. At a time when the social fabric of South Sudan is under maximum pressure, education can do more than mend the damage caused by conflict, it can provide essential building blocks for long-term development.

Cambridge Education is leading the implementation of the GESS programme with its partners BBC Media Action, Charlie Goldsmith Associates, and Winrock International, on behalf of the Department for International Development.

RTI: Improving early grade education across Kenya

In 2015, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) joined with the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to fund a program known as the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity. Taking its name from the Kiswahili word for “let’s read,” Tusome is designed to dramatically improve primary literacy outcomes for more than 3.5 million Kenyan children in grades 1–3.

Under the leadership of the Kenyan Ministry of Education (MOE), RTI is the prime implementer of Tusome, supported by several partner organizations—WERK, Worldreader, and Dalberg- Global Development Advisors. Two major aspects of Tusome set it apart: its rigorous evidence-based approach and its national scale.
 

The project builds upon the approach of the highly successful Primary Mathematics and Reading (PRIMR) initiative, which ran from 2011–2015.

Also led by the MOE, funded by USAID and DFID and implemented by RTI, PRIMR tested early grade education interventions to assess their effectiveness and potential for national scale-up. In particular, PRIMR determined which ingredients of instructional improvement were most critical for learning, which types of information communication technology (ICT) support could make the most impact, and whether and how decisions about the language of instruction could support learning.

Under PRIMR, we collected, analyzed, and used classroom data to design and implement instructional improvements and, in turn, improve reading fluency, reading comprehension, and math abilities. We trained teachers and teacher trainers to implement these new, more effective instructional methods in low cost ways embedded in government systems.

The interventions developed and piloted through PRIMR proved successful. Rigorous randomized controlled trials showed that grade 1 and 2 students in PRIMR schools were two times more likely than those in control schools to meet the MOE’s benchmark for reading fluency and twice as likely to read with comprehension.

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Chemonics: Educating the Future of Moldova's Economy

Today’s global economy demands STEM professionals who are critical thinkers and innovators, with practical experience in technology and engineering. But in Moldova, opportunities to embrace STEM are limited in the labor force and also in the classroom. To nurture the next generation of STEM professionals, Moldova’s government, education, and business communities are making STEM improvement a national priority and tackling a number of challenges.

For one, traditional curricula lack an emphasis on information technology (IT), one of Moldova’s rapidly growing sectors. Furthermore, with fewer students studying STEM in university, the sector’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is faltering. The decline in STEM education in Moldova over recent years threatens the entire economy. So the Moldova Competitiveness Project (MCP), funded by USAID and implemented by Chemonics, is creating opportunities for young learners to experience STEM in the classroom and potentially as a career.

In partnership with the Moldovan Ministry of Education, MCP is introducing STEM in Moldova’s classrooms through educational robotics. Robotics captivates students with the exciting and hands-on application of science and coding. Across 76 educational institutions and seven libraries in Moldova, MCP is implementing RoboClub, an educational robotics initiative that brings real-world engineering challenges to the classroom. Read more