A teacher in Kafue, Zambia, asks a simple but radical question:
“What can each child do today?”
Rather than teaching to the top of the class, she groups her students by learning level and engages them in targeted, playful instruction to build confidence and basic skills. Watching closely is a delegation from Namibia’s Ministry of Education and Meerkat Learning. They are doing more just observing a classroom… they are witnessing an education system that has fully embraced the messy uncertainty of working with government in ways that will be sustained over time.
Zambia has emerged as a reference point for Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) in sub-Saharan Africa. Having hosted delegations from Ministries of Education in other countries, these learning visits serve a dual purpose: inspiring other governments while reaffirming Zambia’s own commitment to continue expanding the approach. Scaled across nine provinces through sustained government leadership, Catch Up is the continent’s oldest and most extensive TaRL program. Since its inception, Catch Up has been supported by a strong network of partners who provided technical and implementation support as the government implemented it. These include UNICEF, VVOB, TaRL Africa, Pratham, J-PAL, World Vision, and Zambia Open Community Schools. Backed by the Gates Foundation’s Daara Innovation Fund, the Namibian exchange wasn’t a standard study tour, but it was a deep dive into the broader architecture of education systems. As Namibia embarks on its TaRL journey, Zambia’s Catch-Up Programme offered an example of what is possible when policy and vision meets practice.
How do organizations resist the temptation to design solutions in isolation and expect them to be effectively “handed over” to governments? And how do organizations push back against the pressure of achieving milestones on unrealistic timelines?
The Namibian delegation found answers in the middle tier. By interacting with the Catch Up Coordinating Committee, a governance body comprising officials from various directorates, they saw how an initiative is managed at scale. They observed how assessment data aggregates from schools to zones using the Ministry’s regular data collection processes. This deliberate integration empowers actors within the education system with the information they need to help children learn sustainably, shifting the focus from mere record-keeping to actual learning outcomes.
And then there are the resources. In Chongwe, the delegation participated in a materials’ validation workshop. The philosophy here is uncompromising: nothing is pre-packaged or externally “validated” by the government, everything is designed with them. This collaborative co-creation ensures that curricula and pedagogy connect across the full journey of a child in school, rather than acting as costly, disconnected add-on. None of these elements are carbon copies, and that’s the point. As Namibia works with Meerkat Learning to implement its own foundational learning solutions, they aren’t taking home a rigid, imported blueprint. They are adopting a long-term perspective in addressing complex challenges.
The stakes are high. Achieving scale for a few years through external funding is not enough. The true measure of success will be when foundational learning is delivered as a matter of routine by public systems, financed through government budgets, and carried forward by teachers as part of their everyday practice. When governments sit firmly in the driver’s seat, the dream of every child gaining the skills to read and do math will no longer be a distant aspiration, but an enduring reality.
