From Implementation to System Transformation
Ten years ago, Zambia began adapting an approach to foundational learning that had first taken shape in India. The idea behind Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) is disarmingly simple: group children by what they can actually do, not by their age or grade, and teach them from there. A decade on, the approach has grown into something the Zambian education system increasingly calls its own, and that journey recently drew a delegation from the place where it all began.
The India–Zambia South-to-South Learning Visit brought together several education sector actors. Delegates comprised representatives of Zambia’s Ministry of Education, TaRL Africa, Officials from two state governments in India, Pratham Education Foundation, Pratham International and VVOB, alongside partners including UNICEF, the Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC) and the Zambia Open Community Schools (ZOCS). On paper, it was a technical visit. In practice, it was a South-to-South exchange between two education systems that have shaped each other for years. India came carrying the lessons of the methodology’s origins and evolution. Zambia showed what happens when a borrowed idea is given time, adaptation and, crucially, systemic ownership.
One question kept surfacing during the classroom visits: why do we do what we do?
It sounds almost too simple to ask out loud. But it kept pulling everyone back to the purpose underneath the programme. Teaching at the Right Level was never only about delivering activities or ticking off a lesson sequence. It exists so that every child, whatever their age or grade, acquires the foundational skills they need in an accelerated manner.
The classrooms offered encouraging evidence that this is happening. Watching learners at that stage, the levels stop looking like categories on an assessment sheet and start looking like what they really are: children on their way back into the mainstream classroom.
What the classrooms taught us
The school visits sparked long conversations with teachers, school leaders and district teams, and the richest of them were about how to make good practice even stronger.
One idea both delegations kept returning to was pace. When a child has clearly mastered a level, the most powerful thing a system can do is trust what the teacher sees and let that child move forward straight away. Continuous progression keeps children motivated, and it honours the professional judgement of the teachers closest to them.
That theme of professional judgement and teacher autonomy ran through the whole visit. The most vibrant TaRL classrooms are led by teachers who treat the lesson plan as a foundation to build on, watching their learners closely and adjusting in real time. The exchange reaffirmed how much the methodology depends on that skill, and how worthy it is of continued investment.
Group size came up repeatedly, too. Smaller groups give every child a chance to speak, practise and demonstrate what they know, and give teachers a clearer view of learning as it happens. Learner group leaders create space for children to support one another. The picture everyone kept describing was the same: a classroom where children do more of the thinking and talking than the teacher does.
And then there was joy. Both delegations were emphatic that songs, games and movement are not decorations on top of the real work. They are the real work. Play is how children stay engaged and how confidence takes root.
The conversation about learning environments carried the same spirit. The most powerful classrooms put learning materials within children’s reach. E.g., flash cards and syllabic charts that learners can see, touch and read, and stories to explore beyond the textbook. Children become better readers by reading, and every piece of meaningful material a child can interact with brings fluency a little closer.
Staying close to where learning happens
Not every lesson from the visit was about classrooms. One of the most enduring was about proximity.
The closer support sits to the classroom, the stronger it becomes. Regular school visits, time spent observing lessons, professional conversations with teachers, and coaching grounded in classroom realities. are key principles the delegations recognised as worth emphasising as TaRL interventions grow.
Ten years in, the partners also did what strong programmes do: they chose their next priorities together. Deepening Catch Up’s place within the school day. Extending professional development so that every teacher who joins a school, however recently, is equipped to deliver the approach with confidence. Inviting parents and communities further into the programme, so that families understand and champion what their children are part of. Sustaining the flow of teaching and learning materials as the programme grows. And setting out clear roadmaps for the decade ahead.
Ten years in, and looking at the next ten
As the visit went on, conversations among the representatives of Zambia’s Ministry of Education, TaRL Africa, a, State governments from India, Pratham Education Foundation and Pratham International drifted naturally from the day-to-day to the long term.
Zambia is marking ten years of TaRL implementation, and the Indian delegation, together with the Ministry, saw in that anniversary a chance to pause properly: to review what has been achieved, reflect honestly on what has been learned, refocus priorities and reimagine the decade ahead. The idea now has a name, “Catch Up at 10”, and an ambition that goes beyond celebration to genuine stock-taking.
The other forward-looking thread was digital. Digitalising teacher training and professional development could reach far more teachers, far more efficiently, while protecting quality at scale. Education systems keep evolving, and TaRL interventions will continue to be adaptable to the local context.
What we take home
For TaRL Africa, the visit reaffirmed things we believe but can never afford to stop testing. Strong partnerships create sustainable change. Reflection is not a luxury; it is how improvement happens. Implementation lives or dies in classrooms. Teachers need ongoing support, not a one-off training and a goodbye. And the truest measure of sustainability is system ownership, which is exactly what Zambia is demonstrating. This is no longer an imported methodology being implemented. It is a national journey being shaped by Zambian context, Zambian systems and Zambian leadership.
As the visit ended, one reflection captured the spirit of the decade better than any report could:
Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best leaders, when the task is accomplished and the work is done, are those whose people say: “We have done it ourselves.”
That, perhaps, is the real achievement of the last ten years. Not that Teaching at the Right Level arrived in Zambia, but that it took root, grew into the country’s own context, and is now carried by the people who believe most deeply in its purpose.
The next decade holds even greater promise. Zambia’s children are already showing us why.
A word of thanks: None of this learning would have been possible without the people and institutions who made the visit happen. Our deep gratitude goes to the Ministry of Education, Zambia, whose leadership and openness sit at the heart of this ten-year journey, and to our partners VVOB, Pratham, UNICEF, the Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC), the Zambia Open Community Schools (ZOCS) and World Vision, whose commitment to foundational learning strengthens this work every day.
