TENMET

UWEZO Tanzania: Promoting Learning

“In our eagerness to assist countries to achieve the EFA and MDG goals, the overriding conclusion … is that we need to be wary of offering ‘solutions’ without ensuring that we are enabling countries to carry out those local investigations and contextualizations which are necessary to give meaning to the use of evidence ….” (Abby Riddell 2008)

Uwezo, meaning “capability” in Kiswahili, is a four year initiative to improve competencies in literacy and numeracy among children aged 5-16 years in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda through an innovative, civic-driven, and public accountability approach to social change. Uwezo will enable ordinary citizens – i.e. parents, students, local communities, and public at large – to become aware of actual levels of children’s literacy and numeracy, and to build on that awareness to stimulate practical and policy change across East Africa.

In recent years there has been unprecedented growth in primary school enrolment in Tanzania, coupled with large increases in public budget for education. These results have put the country on track to achieve the MDG (enrolment and enrolment gender parity) goals for primary education by 2015. At the same time, however, education quality has remained low and may have declined. Government efforts to improve quality appear to have borne little fruit, and innovative ‘pilot’ projects such as the Tusome Vitabu in Tanzania have proven difficult to sustain or replicate at scale. Education budgets tend to prioritize construction and other inputs, and not aspects that may more effectively contribute to or create incentives for quality. As children continue to leave school without the most basic literacy and numeracy skills and the wherewithal to thrive, there is an increasing realization among policymakers and the public that education is failing to live up to its promise.

Educational assessment studies have increased in recent years. However, their use and impact appears to be limited. A major problem is that the assessments tend to be overly technocratic and complex in nature, and are difficult for most people to understand. Access to their findings remains limited to small circles, and their dissemination seems to have failed to stimulate the public imagination or lead to policy change.

Uwezo seeks to fill this gap by generating new information on children’s literacy and numeracy in Tanzania, in a manner that informs the public, stimulates countrywide debate, and creates pressure for policy change from the bottom-up. Building on the pioneering approach of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER, www.asercentre.org) in India, Uwezo will achieve this through the use of following strategies:

1. a large household based survey covering all districts;
2. the use of a very simple tool to assess literacy and numeracy that can be easily administered;
3. inspiring a citizen volunteer-driven approach to conduct the assessment over a few days;
4. instant feedback of the assessment results to parents/guardians, children, and local leaders;
5. broad communication across the country through the media and other forms to create debate; and
6. repeating surveys each year to create and sustain momentum for change.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) will be an important part of the Uwezo initiative especially in as far as it relates to program implementation and achievement of outcomes. A careful monitoring and evaluation system, with constant feedback, will be developed (beyond the limited articulated below). A mid-term review and end of project evaluation will be carried out. M&E will inform program decision making, strengthen learning and program effectiveness and accountability for results.

The following will be the key features of Uwezo Tanzania:

• Instant feedback: Unlike other assessments in the region, e.g. SACMEQ, the results will be instant and will be shared with the child and family immediately.
• Household based: The tests will be conducted within the households. This will help demystify testing as a school event and aptly bring “education” and assessment to the family level, presenting families with the potential of being part of the child’s learning voyage.
• Collaborative spirit: Uwezo derives its stamina from the belief that an education movement united in its search for qualitative changes in the education sector can have more sustained impact. While there is a core group of drivers, the collaborators comprise an inclusive list of government departments/ministries, non-governmental and civil society organizations, institutions and individual who fund, conduct the survey or push for policy.
• Volunteerism: Uwezo will draw upon volunteers to administer the tests nationally. Other than nurturing the community/civic responsibility, it shifts the assessment of learning competencies away from the domain of education professionals to the public domain, hence helping to galvanize public response and action to the schooling process. It will take into account and cut down on hidden costs.
• Scalability: The methodology is designed to be scalable. The nationwide scale will make it more attractive to bureaucrats because every part of the country can easily identify with the results of the survey. It will allow for comparisons which is useful in helping one gauge standards.
• Policy Planning: The survey is timed to provide input into the annual planning and budgeting process. The results aid in shifting prioritization to address key concerns. To convince the policy maker, Uwezo will resort to “scale and awe” to elicit response from governments, who often dismiss results from smaller studies.
• 100 days Analysis: Uwezo will be done within a defined and relatively short period of time. There is no danger of collecting data that becomes stale due to long delays before analysis and use. The determination and focus within the approach is an admirable quality.
• Interventions: The findings will be the springboard for designing suitable interventions, for example “Read India”. Like ASER, the intervention adopted shall be innovative though unsophisticated.
• Periodic nature: Uwezo will be an annual exercise. This will allow a longitudinal data flow in the medium term that informs about children’s basic competencies and monitors improvements registered every year as a result of interventions undertaken during the course of the past year.
• Building partnerships: Current assessments are the preserve of Ministry of Education and other technical players. Uwezo, on the other hand, is driven by civil society. The collective approach of Uwezo that seeks concerted contribution from all will present Education coalitions in the region an opportunity to collectively augment existing efforts in the area of assessment. This approach would be novel given that much of the existing NGO effort is lone ranger, localized, and has narrow geographic coverage and limited policy impact.

Co-ordinators' training will take place from February 25th to 27th, and the first national assessment is scheduled to take place from March 15th to 19th, 2010.

For further information, please contact:

Suleman Sumra

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