EnglishKenyaPAL Network
“Today, I am delighted to be sitting in this stakeholder meeting alongside my supervisors,” Mr Jack told me as he smiled.
“The Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP) is still ongoing in my school. I have currently recalled the two Teacher Assistants (TAs) who had been moved to the nearby school in 2021,” he reported.
“Currently, the TAs are conducting assessments across the school to identify upper-grade learners who have difficulties reading fluently to accelerate their fluency,” he added.
While the TAs were away, Mwibale primary, where Jack is the headteacher, appointed one regular teacher to continue the literacy and numeracy catch-up sessions. The school had already planned a board meeting to discuss payment for the two reinstated teachers. The audience, comprising 12 members attending the meeting, was deeply inspired.
“The ALP introduced to us the idea of reading clubs. We extended this idea to the whole school, and now all the learners are engaged in daily read-aloud sessions. From 11:00 am to 11:30 am, learners read Kiswahili stories and English stories from 1:30 pm to 2:00 pm. To break classroom monotony, these sessions take place outside. Since we do not have enough storybooks, the learners use course books to read the stories,” Mr Jack continues.
This warms my heart because he has found a way around the challenge of insufficient storybooks. The reading culture has taken root.
“Our learners now enjoy reading anything they come across. Even as they go to the restrooms, they collect materials on the way and start reading,” he added.
To promote reading skills, the school carries out dictation sessions for the whole school on Mondays, mental maths on Tuesdays and ‘Imla’ on Fridays. The sessions utilise the words mainly drawn from the stories read during the week.
“Teachers use the fun and play activities observed during the ALP sessions to teach numeracy. The numeracy teachers from our neighbouring schools – Nabichakha and Dorofu – have visited our school to learn about the approaches used,” he noted.
“Since the programme was introduced in my school in 2019, I have seen many transitions. Firstly, in 2018, the top student scored 208 marks. The rest scored less than 200 marks. Mwibale primary is considered the best school around due to the impressive performance record. This year (2022), the top student scored 408 marks, and the school got a mean score of 259 in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) national examinations,” he narrates.
This message gives me hope that efforts to improve learning are evident in the school. From a population of 626 in 2018, the school had an enrolment of 1,010 in 2022. However, this presents infrastructural challenges.
“We are unable to turn down students from other schools, resulting in four classes learning from under the trees. This has been a challenge, especially during the rainy seasons when we have to squeeze all the learners into the classrooms, typically making over 200 learners per class. When parents come to our school seeking admission and we ask them to try neighbouring schools, their children get upset. They all want to join our school. We are happy that everyone wants to join our school,” Mr Jack explained.
The ALP, implemented in Bungoma, Turkana and Tana River counties, was launched in 2018. As of 2022, the programme has reached 61, 39 and 50 schools (150 schools) in Bungoma, Turkana and Tana River counties, respectively. The programme focuses on expediting the acquisition of foundational competencies to ensure that targeted learners are equipped to read with understanding and reason with numbers. By 2022, the programme had impacted over 25,000 learners. To sustain the nascent literacy and numeracy competencies, the programme supports schools to organise reading clubs and read-aloud sessions. Mwibale primary is one great example of how transformational school leaders have sustained these efforts, thereby reducing illiteracy and the subsequent impact on enrolment, community ownership and improved performance.
To support the reading culture, Zizi Afrique donated 222 storybooks to Mwibale primary, which were handed over during the stakeholders’ meeting on the 28th of April 2022. To further sustain learning, Safaricom has constructed libraries, and so far, each county has benefitted from two libraries.
According to UNESCO, literacy is also a driver of sustainable development because it increases labour-force participation, improves child and family health and nutrition, reduces poverty and broadens life opportunities. Literacy is now understood to be a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world, going beyond its traditional concept as a set of reading, writing and counting skills.
Globally, however, at least 773 million youth and adults still cannot read and write, and 250 million learners are failing to acquire basic literacy skills. This results in the exclusion of low-literate and low-skilled youth and adults from full participation in their communities and societies. To advance literacy as an integral part of lifelong learning and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UNESCO takes the following approaches to promote literacy worldwide, with an emphasis on youth and adults.
- Building strong foundations through early childhood care and education
- Providing quality Basic Education for all learners
- Scaling up functional literacy levels for youth and adults who lack basic literacy skills
- Developing literate environments
In most cases, when local and international organisations invest their resources in schools to improve literacy and numeracy skills, the school administration is charged with the responsibility of successfully implementing programmes. Where school leaders take the programmes seriously, the efforts are sustained even beyond the funding of the projects. Therefore, the school leaders’ role cannot be underestimated.
