1 Using quality improvement to improve educational performance of children in Malawi Dr. Taroub Faramand (Founder & President WI-HER LLC) Tiwonge Moyo

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Using quality improvement to improve educational performance of

children in Malawi

Dr. Taroub Faramand (Founder & PresidentWI-HER LLC)

Tiwonge Moyo (USAID ASSIST Project, Resident Advisor, Malawi)

USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems

Malawi: At what scale are we working?

3 USG PEPFAR partners (VMMC)

10 QI Teams(OVC)13 QI Teams (VMMC)14 QI Teams (Malaria)

2 out of 28 districts-OVC7 out of 28 districts-VMMC2 out of 28 districts-Malaria

HIV/AIDS (including OVC)

151 Villages 20 GVHs7 TAs

MOGCDSW- OVCMOH-VMMCMOH-Malaria

Mangochi

Balaka


What are we trying to accomplish?

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Nkata Improvement Team Members Village Development Committee

representative

Representative of the

Community Rights

Committee

Four Primary School Headmasters

Forest Officer

Community Child protection worker

Health Surveillance Assistant

CBO Director

Police Office representative

Early Childhood Caregivers

Community volunteers

Improve the education performance of vulnerable children in 14 primary schools in two districts

USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems4

What are we trying to accomplish?

• Multisectoral Community improvement teams conducted CSI assessments on 25% of the registered vulnerable children


Problem analysis using fish bone diagrams

5


Some changes tested before integrating gender

• Strengthening linkages between schools and communities

• Enforcing community by-laws by local leaders to promote education

• Advocating for additional teachers in schools

6


Results in the two schools: Percentage of pupils who pass exams in six terms (2013-15)

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Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4 Term 5 Term 60%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

51%

57%

66%

76% 77%80%

25%

17%

33%

45%

55%

65%

Percentage of pupils who pass exams at Kwilembe, Mpapa, Nakanyanja and Lusalumwe Primary schools

Mpapa

Lusalumwe

Changes tested in the schools

Mpapa: Use of school competitions

Lusalumwe:establishment of children corner


Collecting sex disaggregated data by school

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Compiling educational performance data by school

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Changes tested in school A

• Primary School A has a total enrolment of 1,093 children (532 boys and 561 girls)

• Provide emotional healing by encouraging games that encourage team work e.g. football and netball after school

• Promote respect of children’s rights through quiz sessions, interactive dialogue on sexual violence and role plays on various abuse scenarios

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Changes tested

• Promote self awareness to children through psychosocial support activities such as tree of life and family trees

• Linked with an international organisation that provided additional soccer and net balls to promote the children’s corner activity

• Provided counseling through linkages with a community child protection worker of challenges they face in school and in communities

• Linked the children’s corner to a health centre for access to reproductive health and HIV information from the medical assistant

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Percentage of boys and girls who passed at School A

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10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

30%

21%

34%

46%

55% 57%

20%

13%

32%

42%

55%

75%

Percentage of boys and girls who pass term exams at Lusalumwe Primary School

Boys Grils

% passed

Term 1 -3:Linkages between school and community and use of by-laws

Term 4 and 5:

Use of children corner cen-tres

Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4 Term 5 Term 60

200

400 310 295 329 269 306 253300 248 295 238370

194

Total number of boys and girls who sat for exams

Boys Girls Series3


Percentage of pupils who passed exams in School A from Term 1-3 (2013-15)

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# passed Total Term 1






Std 1 41 223 17 216 71 285 80 229 180 347 102 157

Std 2 13 105 25 75 24 130 46 73 54 115 59 107

Std 3 28 97 14 83 36 70 20 64 38 47 39 58

Std 4 20 40 12 38 16 30 15 32 32 45 29 38

Std 5 8 39 2 41 18 34 21 34 28 48 15 29

Std 6 23 44 10 39 30 33 19 27 15 26 17 26

Std 7 12 38 10 31 6 22 21 35 20 35 28 32

Std 8 8 24 5 20 5 20 4 13 6 13 NaN NaN


10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Percentage of pupils who pass exams across the classes at Lusalumwe Primary school

Std 1 Std 2 Std 3 Std 4 Std 5 Std 6 Std 7 Std 8

% p

upils


Changes tested in school B

• Primary School B has a total enrolment of 412 children (209 boys and 203 girls)

• After training of the team, oriented SMC, guardians, teachers on improvement activities in the school

• The first two changes were strengthening linkages and enforcing by-laws in communities in term 1-3

• In term 4-6 introduced mathematics clubs and school competitions from standards 3 to 8 to improve the capability of pupils to like and succeed in mathematics.

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Changes tested in school B

• During the club sessions, children are divided into two groups; the junior classes group (standards 3-4) and the senior classes group (standards 5-8).

• The mathematics club meets every Friday for two hours.

• Pupils are engaged in various activities such as mathematics competitions, maths exercises and quizzes for mental calculations.

• Teachers took turns to facilitate the club sessions and the headmaster ensures that each Friday the maths club sessions are held and pupils in the targeted classes were participating

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Percentage of boys and girls who passed at School B

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Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4 Term 5 Term 6

Boys 54% 62% 71% 76% 69% 83%

Series2 111 123 168 155 130 132

Series3 206 200 238 204 189 159

Girls 48% 52% 60% 76% 86% 76%

Series5 108 96 102 138 143 122

Series6 226 185 169 181 166 160

5%

15%

25%

35%

45%

55%

65%

75%

85%

95%

54%62%

71%76%

69%

83%

48%52%

60%

76%

86%

76%

Percentage of girls and boys who pass exams at Mpapa Primary School

Terms

% b

oys

an

d g

irls

Strengthening linkages and enforcing by-laws

Using school clubs, competitions


Percentage of pupils that passed end of term exams at School B by class

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# passed Term 1

Total # passed Term 2





Total

Std 1 46 95 53 85 46 77 76 90 79 99 52 52

Std 2 48 87 37 77 51 72 53 63 40 57 39 61

Std 3 42 74 31 61 23 59 56 80 64 70 64 78

Std 4 35 50 35 50 34 47 26 36 20 26 23 27

Std 5 21 48 26 41 29 41 44 51 33 38 32 37

Std 6 9 42 17 35 68 77 21 36 21 35 25 34

Std 7 18 36 20 36 19 34 17 29 16 30 19 30


10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Percentage of pupils who pass exams across classes at Mpapa Primary School

Std 1 Std 2 Std 3 Std 4 Std 5 Std 6 Std 7

% p

up

ils


Percentage of pupils who passed exams in 14 schools in two districts in Malawi

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10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

52%

47%

60%58%

62%

69%

Percentage of pupils who pass exams at 14 schools in Balaka and Mangochi Districts

Mpapa

Nakanyanja

Lusalumwe

Kwilembe

Chingwenya

Masongola 1

Nsanga

Chilore

Toleza

Kabango

St Ignasio

Masuku

Jiramu

Kankao

All schools

School terms

% passed in school


What are we learning?

• CSI assessments and root cause analysis helped communities identify real challenges vulnerable children face on their own

• Motivated teams to address identified problems in resource constrained communities



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1. Reviewing primary school performance sex disaggregated data by the teams is assisting stakeholders to be interested

o in progress of the schools performanceo existing challengeso how they can improve education services in their communities• support OVC can receive from teachers

QI team primary school data drawn by team members, Photo taken by Tiwonge Moyo



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2. Involvement of local leaders and existing government structures in improvement work strengthens the commitment of governmentextension workers to deliver quality social services

3. Shortage of teachers and infrastructure in schools limits children’s ability to perform

Group Village Masuku of TA M’Bwananyambi in Mangochi, Team Leader of Nancholi QI team



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4. To register improvements in academic performance, community teams need to intensify discussions and guidance with vulnerable families

5. Limiting the number of improvement aims helps to collect and manage data at community level

6. It is possible to facilitate improvement in low literacy level communities in resource constrained environments


Lessons from the targeted schools

• Involving teachers in decision making to improve performance of schools is valuable because teachers have the responsibility of identifying and monitoring performance and progress of poor performing children

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What are we learning from schools not doing well?

• Large classes are a challenge for teachers to handle and leads to poor performance in a classes of 206:1 pupil-teacher ratios

• Limited qualified teachers in schools not doing well

• Infrastructure, teaching and learning materials challenges in schools leading to poor results in performance24


Acknowledgements

• Ministry of Gender Children Disability and Social Welfare (MOGCDSW)

• USAID Malawi

• The end!

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Documents

1 Using quality improvement to improve educational performance of children in Malawi Dr. Taroub Faramand (Founder & President WI-HER LLC) Tiwonge Moyo