The Zambian Ministry of Education hosted an inter-country study visit between Malawi and Zambia from the 21st to the 24th of March 2022. The objective of the visit was for the Malawi Ministry of Education team to understand how the Teaching at the Right Level Program (TaRL) is being implemented at scale by the Ministry of Education in Zambia, where the programme is now reaching over 2700 schools. The TaRL programme, or Catch-Up, as it is known in Zambia, focuses on providing foundational skills to children in grades 3, 4 and 5 in numeracy and litearcy.
VVOB Zambia and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the British High Commission (FCDO) in Malawi facilitated the visit. Learning outcomes in Malawi remain low, notwithstanding the implementation of different interventions in literacy and numeracy. The good stories and positive research findings on Catch-Up prompted the visiting team to travel to Zambia to learn how Catch-Up is working in Zambia with the intention of informing policy and Catch-Up implementation in Malawi. The team of delegates from the Ministry of Education in Malawi comprised the Director Basic Education - Grace Milner; Deputy Director Quality Assurance and Standards - Lindiwe Chide; Deputy Director Inclusive Education - Peter Msendema; Primary Education Advisor - Clement Chikankha; a primary school teacher - Tryness Mitambo Bondo. They were accompanied by Arianna Zanolini, Education Advisor FCDO.
The delegation visited three schools: Nangongwe Primary School, Hetty Denen Primary School in Kafue District and Tunduya Primary School in Lusaka District. The Malawian delegation was impressed with the Catch-Up classes and methodology. They were especially impressed with the strategy of regrouping learners according to their levels and teaching them according to their needs, the essence of TaRL. They also particularly liked the playful elements of the methodology, which allows learners to learn while having fun. Further, the delegation was impressed with the training style used for teachers, master trainers and administrators and requested more insights in this area from their Zambia counterparts. They are even considering involving pre-service lecturers in such training in order to have a larger impact through newly trained teachers.
Another area of interest was understanding how Special Education Needs are handled in Catch-Up training and teaching. After the visit, the Director for Basic Education, Ms. Grace Milner concluded ''Catch-Up is a very good program. If we adopt it, it will help us a lot as a country.'' The Malawian delegates indicated that they would strongly recommend its implementation and expressed their desire to have more orientation and training from the Zambian team.
Lastly, the team from Malawi was particularly impressed with the strong working relations between the Zambia Ministry of Education and its partners supporting the roll out of Catch-Up, VVOB and TaRL Africa. They observed that the solid relationship contributes significantly to the success in program implementation.
