Abul Mayen (Centre), a South Sudanese refugee Uwezo volunteer in Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement, Adjumani district in Uganda assesses a child in literacy as her co-volunteer and the child’s parents look on
In October 2017, Uwezo Uganda at Twaweza, with funding from the Humanitarian Emergency Refugee Response in Uganda (HERRU), Department for International Development (DFID), started assessing children’s learning in four refugee settlements in northern Uganda. We were responding to the reality that although there has been a number of interventions in refugee contexts intended to expand education opportunities to refugee citizens, many of these interventions have focused primarily on inputs into education such as: funding, teaching resources and improved infrastructure. Little was being done to measure whether these interventions actually translate into improving children’s learning outcomes. This was the first time in almost a decade since Uwezo first started conducting citizen-led assessments in Uganda in 2009, that refugee settlements would be included in the survey. This would also be the first time globally such a citizen-led learning assessment would be conducted in an emergency context.
So, in 2017, Uwezo took a bold step and piloted its learning assessment in the four largest refugee hosting districts in Uganda, including: Adjumani, Arua, Isingiro and Yumbe. The main purpose of the pilot was to see if children in refugee settlements were learning basic literacy and numeracy skills, and how their learning compared to children outside the refugee settlements. To aid this comparison, an equal number of villages (15 in each case) were randomly selected from refugee settlements and the host community in each surveyed district. Twenty households were randomly selected in each sampled village and all children aged 6-16 years from these households were assessed in basic reading and numeracy.
One of Uwezo’s key principles is to ensure that the assessment is carried out at the household level by citizens who are recruited from within (or close to) the surveyed villages. One fear at the outset of the pilot was difficulty in recruiting and training able refugee citizen volunteers due to language challenges and differences in education systems. This fear was quickly proved wrong as Uwezo Uganda recruited and trained enthusiastic refugee volunteers who were not only able to assess children’s learning but also convened village meetings to discuss the findings and get the communities to make commitments to improve children’s learning.
An example of such able refugee volunteers is of two young ladies: 30-year old Abul Mayen and 28-year old Mary Atoor. Abul and Mary were recruited and trained to conduct the learning assessment in Block G, Nyumanzi refugee settlement, Adjumani district. Over a 2-day period, Abul and Mary successfully assessed 85 children in literacy and 75 in numeracy. They compiled the results of the assessment into a village report card and convened a village meeting to start a conversation about learning. The discussion ignited by the village report inspired the community tocommit to support their children’s learning. The commitments ranged from parents promising to not only send children to school but also monitor their school work at school and at home, to local leaders committing to visit the school monthly to talk with the head teacher and teachers about issues affecting children’s learning.
Though such commitments are only as good as their implementation, , making them serves as a starting point for communities taking own the process of improving their children’s learning. Abul and Mary themselves promised to continue following up on these commitments and occasionally use Uwezo tests to continue assessing children’s learning. This spirit of wanting to support learning in their community is driven by the desire to give back to their community and the fact that the knowledge and skills acquired from participating in Uwezo learning assessment is also useful to them as parents. As noted by Abul: “I am a mother so I can also assess and monitor my children’s learning from the knowledge and skills acquired from participating in Uwezo assessment”.
Overall, the results from the learning assessment indicated that refugee children were just as likely to be learning in school as their non-refugee counterparts, and that refugees faced challenging home and school conditions that needed improvement to guarantee quality learning for every child. The full report of the findings is forthcoming, and any further information about the study can be sent to gnakabugo@twaweza.org