Cameroon
Background
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has supported the “School for All” programme in several African countries since 2004.
School for All empowers parents, communities, and schools to improve children’s education through encouraging school enrolment and providing community-led supplementary lessons in the form of the “Minimum Package for Quality Learning (PMAQ)” model. The PMAQ model has provided extra mathematics support to over 300,000 primary school children in Niger and Madagascar over the past two years. To further accelerate children’s learning, JICA is integrating the TaRL approach and has developed a model for both literacy and numeracy.
Education has been at the heart of the conflict in NWSW Cameroon which started in 2016.
Over 90% of schools were closed in the course of the conflict. For the academic year
2022-2023, only 46 per cent of schools are currently functioning and only 54 per cent of students are enrolled in the North-West and South-West. Most families have been displaced to buffer zones in search of livelihood, shelter, education, protection etc. The result of the displacement has led to overcrowding in schools with pupil per classroom ratios of up to 200 children thereby causing a huge drop in learning quality. Although some children can now access learning in formal and non formal institutions, a majority of them are severely lacking in foundational literacy and numeracy learning skills. 80% of facilitators in the above-mentioned institutions have had no training at all. Most others have had some training based on the government curriculum but not on any emergency-adapted approaches to learning. There is currently no adapted curriculum or pedagogical approach being rolled out to these learning spaces, making it very challenging for teachers to meet the learning and psychosocial support needs of children who have experienced years of conflict. Teachers do not master the appropriate methodology to address this challenge, they tend to go along with the more performing pupils with the risk of leaving many of the pupils behind.
To date, education projects in NWSW Cameroon have largely focused on access to education over quality of learning. The approach of this project, which aims to improve access to education but also ensure that children are acquiring foundational skills that are life-saving and life-sustaining in a conflict-affected context, is therefore innovative. It is one of the first projects to measure learning outcomes in this context.
In order to address this need, NADEV and Street Child’s first pilot of TaRL with over 500 beneficiaries pupils in 03 pilot schools in a Project entitled: Catch up Classes for Internally Displaced Persons and Host Communities in the Southwest Region showed the impact this approach can have in this context; in just 7 weeks, 57% of enrolled learners moved up one numeracy level and 44% of enrolled learners moved up one literacy level.
However, this pilot was limited – both in terms of timeframe and level of coaching that could be provided to the teachers. The need to reach more children and teachers was heard through the ‘We Go Sabi’ project funded by TaRL Africa
The ‘We go Sabi’ project seeks to reach more children to enable them improve on their foundational literacy and numeracy skills. This project runs for a period of 01 year with target number of children at 960 both in the formal and informal settings. It is implemented in Cohorts:
Cohort 1 for Out of school children (5 months) targets 320 children in 04 temporary learning spaces in Mutengene, Mile 16 Bolifamba, Ekona and Tole.
Cohort 2 for In school (2 months) targets 320 children in 3 formal schools namely; Government School Great Soppo Group 1, St Mark Catholic School Sandpit and Government School Mutengene Group 1. These children are taught according to the Teaching at the Right Level TaRL approach. The setting is piloted for children enrolled in these schools who are facing challenges catching up due to a lack of foundational knowledge after having missed out on several years of schooling.
Cohort 3 Out of school. (5 months) targets 320 children in 04 temporary learning spaces in Mutengene Tiko Road, Mile 16 Bolifamba Stone Quarter, Ekona Babylon and Tole Weeding.
In all, the foundational skills of 320 children for the formal setting and 640 children for the non- formal setting is supposed to be improved at the end of the project. 14 teachers have been trained according to the TaRL Methodology to facilitate the teaching process.
From pilot till now, a total of 1,098 learners, 587 female and 511 male have been reached. 86.8% of learners moved up at least one Literacy level for the non-formal setting while 79.3% of learners moved up at least one numeracy level for the formal setting, 90.5% of learners moved to one literacy level and 86.3% learners moved up to at least one numeracy learning level. The 3rd Cohort is ongoing and will end in may 2023.
