Today, July 4, the Uwezo East Africa Report presents, for the first time, data comparing literacy and numeracy levels across East Africa, based on a survey of over 80,000 households. The findings give the clearest picture we have so far of the basic foundation and readiness of Kenyan, Uganda and Tanzanian citizens to thrive, including in their engagement with East African integration. How do the countries do against their own benchmarks? How do they do relative to each other?
Here are the key findings:
- All three countries do poorly compared to the required curricular levels, but Kenya does relatively better compared to Tanzania and Uganda.
- As children progress up the grades, most are able to do the Grade 2 test by Grade 7/8, except half of all children in Tanzania can still not do Grade 2 level English.
- Mothers education level (secondary ) and family wealth background are clear advantages; gender and to some extent private schooling differences are insignificant.
- School infrastructure has a very weak effect on driving learning outcomes; this is important because efforts of all three countries have and continue to focus on investing in inputs.
- Within countries (and districts) there are large differences, and national/district aggregates mask these figures. Within these, clearly children in some districts and schools perform better with (apparently) the same level of resources — it might be valuable to further explore how they have made it work.
- Recent findings from experimental studies suggest that understanding teacher motivation, incentivizing performance and practical accountability may be valuable keys to explore improving learning outcomes.
Get the full report here:
Let us know what you think: Are the findings surprising? Apart from the considerations to reform the education systems, should we also be aware of the illiteracy chasm that keeps on growing? The hardest one — how should we go about solving the main problems?
We have been publishing these sorts of reports on many occasions hoping they would raise awareness and provoke serious and meaningful debates — which might or might not give a glimpse of desperately needed solutions. But shying away or not airing your views at all (the NGO’s will come to the rescue[?]) will have only one outcome that we are all aware of.
Therefore, play your part whichever way you can.
See the reports of respective countries, too:
Asante SN. One thing that came up from the Q&A at the presentation this morning was about school quality. Namely, people thought that Uwezo was saying “school quality does not affect childrens’ learning”. But as Uwezo reps clarified – and as you rightly stated under fact # 4 – school quality as far as infrastructure and teacher/pupil ratios are concerned is a weak factor in childrens’ learning in EA. In other words, Uwezo adopted a very specific definition of “school quality” because from a huge list of variables one could say affects “learning”, Uwezo ran regressions on a finite amount of data they collected (which is still much much bigger than other studies’ data in the past).
Another point of interest for me personally was the consideration of how a report like this could inform informal learning mechanisms. Three factors Uwezo says affects childrens’ learning according to their data were (1) progression into later grades, (2) mothers’ education and (3) wealth. If we grossly alter/paraphrase these to (1) progression, (2) parental interest and (3) resources, is there any way we can condition informal learning mechanisms (conversation, blogs, radio, etc) such that they could galvanize on these three factors?
The second factor is actually “mother’s education” as the report states, rather than “parental interest” which is a crude generalization in the above comment.
Interesting… Uwezo is being extra clear here: If we ensure the education of young girls, we are likely to see the next generation learn better.
Man, I just thought of this today, and it seems mad obvious: Why not have 7th of 8th graders be part of the teaching crew for much younger grades, say grades 1 and 2? Dare I say that the teaching standards may be better and knowledge will be more efficiently retained?