We met Priscilla a year ago when she was eight years old.
We went back this year to see how her learning journey is going.
We are working with Priscilla along with three other children to learn more about the everyday reality of foundational learning on the continent. Their stories will help bring to life the evidence in our Spotlight series research.
That research shows that foundational learning is a critical building block for all children to be able to fulfil their potential. However, only one in five on the continent will complete primary school and have minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics.
By all accounts, Priscilla has had a successful year in school.
“They call me Priscilla Agyei. I am 9 years old and I am in class three currently".
My friends are Gifty, Rebecca, Mawukoenya. When we are in class we enjoy ourselves and we play outside".
“They call my teacher Madam Genevieve Tetteh,” Priscilla told us. “She has patience to teach me”.
Genevieve was Priscilla’s teacher last year as well.
“I've been teaching Priscilla from Basic 1 to now and she has improved in her learning".
“When it comes to mathematics, she performs well during activities. She actively participates in this. In other subjects too, she’s improving”.
We asked Genevieve about the support she receives to be able to teach Priscilla well in class. We wanted her opinion on the core finding from the Spotlight Report, Learning Counts, released this year, which showed that often textbooks and teacher guides are not aligned with the curriculum, or of sufficient quality to help teachers do their work.
“With this new curriculum, we don't get any support from anywhere. We don't have any teaching guides, apart from for the English and the Ghanaian language guides, which are from USAID."
"When we use teaching and learning materials, the children are able to understand it better. But we are not given any textbooks. We don’t even have one”.
Teacher guides are designed to assist teachers in using the textbooks as intended. Just as textbooks frame teachers’ instructional decisions, teacher guides have the potential to influence the pedagogical choices teachers make in the classroom. At the very least, they identify the order in which teachers should address topics and how much time they should spend on each topic. Many provide guidance on how teachers should present topics to pupils and include summative evaluation tools to measure pupil performance on these topics.
Teacher guides that are highly scripted go even further, providing teachers with daily lesson plans that outline each step in the learning process. Like textbooks, teacher guides serve to translate an abstract curriculum into concrete and operational steps for teachers to follow.
“They should reduce the content in the curriculum,” Genevieve told us. “It’s too worded and the time frame is limited. You don't get time to teach to their understanding, you just brush through the content so you can finish the curriculum before the time is due".
Teachers from across the Spotlight countries mentioned that the current mathematics instruction time is insufficient, potentially undermining both teaching and students’ learning.
The amount of time that countries allocate to mathematics in their curriculum differs substantially. Children in primary school in South Africa benefit from up to 90 more hours of mathematics instruction than children in Niger, Mauritania, Zambia and Uganda, for instance.
Teachers also express concerns about the workload associated with teaching mathematics in particular, which calls for significant time preparing lessons and assessing students.
“At times we prepare materials ourselves, like we use counters or straws, or we make them, go for gravel and use,” Genevieve told us as she described the preparation she did before class".
“At times it works, at times it doesn't”
Given often-difficult conditions, such as overcrowded classrooms, poor infrastructure and a lack of teaching and learning materials, teachers seldom manage to meet all the objectives of the session within the allotted instruction time.
Miss Rosemary Abrokwah the head teacher of the school confirmed that working conditions are hard.
"Our environment is not safe for us, so it makes it difficult to work with them and also the community as well".
Pricilla’s mother, Yaa Boatemah, told us she had heard the same:
“Some of them live alone and living here is difficult for them. At the recent parent-teacher-association they said their journey to the school was very difficult. If they built houses for the teachers in this area they would not have to travel so far.
“Also the school buildings: when it rains then it pours on them. When the wind is too strong they have to move to the class they built for kindergarten”.
The need for Priscilla to do well weighs on her mother’s mind.
”I always think about Priscilla and her siblings, how will I be able to make them reach somewhere big in life"?
“I wasn’t able to finish school, so I cant read or write properly. If my children able to read and write they will be able to help and guide me”.
A child’s parent’s education matters for their education opportunities. IN Ghana, for example, the WIDE database shows that, if parents have not completed primary education, on average, their children have a 61% chance of completing, while, if their parents have completed post-secondary education or higher, their children’s chances of completing jump to 81%.
In Learning Counts, we recommend:
1. Give all children a textbook – and all teachers a guide.
Ensure that all children and teachers have teaching and learning materials that are research-based, aligned with the curriculum, and locally developed.
2. Develop teacher capacity.
Ensure all teachers use classroom time effectively through cost-effective training.
Provide teacher learning circles that allow teachers to share knowledge outside of instructional time.
Alternative approaches which could alleviate their challenges include allotting separate time for teachers to prepare mathematics lessons each week.
