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Our last Newsletter carried a paper entitled Enhancing
school leadership: meeting the challenges of HIV and AIDS.
In that paper we briefly reported on a highly innovative model that
has potential for keeping at risk learners in school, by supporting
them so they experience academic achievement even when they are
absent from school. This unique model was developed for the SOFIE
(Strengthening Open and Flexible Learning for Increased Education)
project and is currently being implemented in a few selected schools
in Malawi and Lesotho. In this edition Ephraim Mhlanga provides
more comprehensive information on this support intervention which
is the brainchild of Dr. Pat Pridmore of the Institute of Education,
University of London and principal investigator in the SOFIE project.
In June 2008, the research team for the SOFIE project convened
in Zomba, Malawi to review progress of the project. The project
focuses on reducing dropout amongst ‘at risk’ learners
in HIV prevalence areas, and is taking place in a few selected schools
in that country as well as in Lesotho.
The essence of the SOFIE intervention in these two contexts is to
provide enough support to learners at risk so they can experience
academic success and be motivated to remain in school. In Malawi,
this intervention is at Grade 6 level whilst in Lesotho, it is in
Grade 10. The phenomenon of orphanhood is a manifestation of a constellation
of many social and economic factors that are difficult to disentangle.
As a result the causes of learner vulnerability extend well beyond
HIV and AIDS.
In the SOFIE intervention, at risk learners are identified by researchers
working with the relevant schools; and often such learners may have
parents who are deceased, or have one or both parents who are sick,
or who may be so poor that they cannot provide food to their children,
let alone support their education. In both research contexts, school
attendance by such learners is very irregular. On the few occasions
they attend, the motivation to learn is lacking as they are tired
and hungry and also have no form of academic support outside the
school, factors which increase the probability of drop out.
In the kind of environments where the research intervention is being
implemented learners at risk constitute a significant proportion
of the entire school enrolment, mainly due to high poverty levels
in communities, but also due to depressing learning environments
at school. For example, in the four case schools that are located
in different regions in Malawi, the startling schooling conditions
are depicted by the statistics:
- Enrolment in the schools range from 910 – 2222.
- Teacher:Pupil ratio was not less than 1:113 and as high as 1:185.
- Orphans as a % of total enrolment ranged from 16% to as high
as 29%.
(Source: Information supplied by the relevant school principals
at the Zomba workshop)
Under the conditions depicted above, it is not unexpected that a
large proportion of the learner cohort is ‘at risk’
of dropping out of school. There is a combination of home factors
that pull learners from school and school factors that push learners
out of school. The SOFIE project is premised on the assumption that
any intervention that is aimed at keeping such learners in the school
system should be able to effectively provide academic support to
learners when they are out of school.
In reviewing the SOFIE intervention at the Malawi workshop, the
project team tried to identify activities that can provide this
kind of support to absentee learners, through a more appropriate
network/circle of support where the community, the teacher, and
the buddies provide a circle of support to learners at risk.
The key elements of the SOFIE circle of support intervention include:
- Support of absent learners by the teacher who puts together
a package of learning materials consisting of homework, textbooks,
pens, notebooks, and other reading materials which is sent to
the absentee learner through a buddy. The learning package, appropriately
termed the ‘school in a bag’ is sent to the absent
learner regularly enough to keep the latter engaged. The teacher
receives back homework from the absent learner through the buddy
and provides timely feedback and more work.
- A community-based ‘keep-up’ club leader who meets
all absent learners in the community and provides them with motivation
as well as assisting them with their homework. The club leader,
who is from a local Care-Based Organisation (CBO) keeps in close
liaison with the teacher and is equipped with a ‘school
in a box’- textbooks, manual on guidance and counselling,
a calculator, a football/netball, a kite; games on HIV and AIDS,
a youth comic providing HIV prevention education, and other support
materials that he needs to offer maximum support to learners.
The club leader can also mark some of the learners’ work,
although the work is also sent to the teacher in order to keep
him informed of the child’s progress. The ‘keep-up’
club provides an opportunity for absentee learners to meet, interact,
and share with other learners in the community. Apart from giving
these unfortunate learners an opportunity to meet and interact
with other learners in similar circumstances, the ‘keep-up’
club supports learners with their academic work.
- The school management committee keeps track of ‘learners
at risk’ by following up with them in the community and
providing additional material support, especially food. The committee
also ensures that teachers keep a record of all such learners,
and the progress they make as a result of the support they provide.
The SOFIE intervention does not encourage learners to be absent
from school, but instead offers support to learners who are unable
to attend school due to circumstances beyond their control, so that
they do not become outright dropouts. The central aim of the intervention
is to facilitate academic achievement and break the vicious circle
of poverty in which they are entangled. The attached
diagram summarises the circle of support as conceived in the
SOFIE project.
As may be expected, interventions of this nature cannot be implemented
without difficulties, especially given that they deal with the most
adverse of conditions. Luckily enough, to date the intervention
is well on course in Malawi, despite the four-week backlog it is
currently experiencing. In Lesotho, there has been quite some bit
of slippage in terms of the timing of activities, but the team is
still hopeful that the intervention will yield results. The SOFIE
team will meet in Lesotho towards the end of this year to review
the intervention and analyse the results. If successful, the notion
of the “school in a bag” complemented by the community-based
“keep-up"; club may prove an attractive remedy to the
problem of high school dropouts prevalent in the developing world.
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