COVID19 Education: Can SMS Learning Make a Difference?
Learning Reflections after One Year of Coronavirus in Kenya
by Claire Mongeau, CEO of M-Shule
Schools have closed again as Kenya enters the third wave of coronavirus, and a looming question remains: how can families help their children keep learning and prevent learning slide? How can the education and innovation community ensure that learning poverty does not increase for vulnerable students?
More than 85% of Africa’s population works in the informal economy and 90% are low-income or poor. In Kenya, the challenges facing these low-income households have only increased in the one year since COVID19 came to the country. According to a survey by FSD Kenya, 75% of their sampled low-income households make less than KES 10,000 per month (about USD 93.40 as of today’s exchange rates). On average, there are 3 school-going children in each household, often depending on only one income earner.
The pandemic brought tremendous fear and instability into these families’ lives. Incomes decreased, costs of food and transportation increased, and families struggled to cover basic needs like meals and sanitation. Tellingly, between March and December 2020, the proportion of households that relied on formal employment went from 32% to 5% as parents lost their jobs; families instead turned to casual labor and farming. 84% had more debt than before, had used up their savings, and believed it would take months to financially recover once normalcy returns.
As of April 2021, curfew has been reinstated, businesses have closed and lockdown restrictions have been put in place anew — meaning this difficult situation is only going to continue for low-income Kenyan families.
How did this affect learning?
Last year, when Kenyan schools were closed in March 2020 due to coronavirus, learners were sent home without digital tools to continue their education. When the rest of the world’s students had the ability to migrate to online learning, the 2020 census revealed that only 1 in 5 Kenyans regularly access the internet (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2020). That means that 80% of Kenyan children are offline, without smartphones or internet, and available digital learning methods — even Google Classrooms, Zoom, or Whatsapp — are inaccessible.
Instead, parents invested in private tutors or printing educational materials in response to the school closures, spending up to 7% of the little income they have per child on learning tools. In our field research, we learned that a private tutor in low-income or rural areas typically costs KES 200 (USD 1.87) per visit. One visit per week would cost a struggling family KES 800 (USD 7.47) per month — 8% of normal monthly income. Traveling to a local cyber café to print weekly assignments would cost a family at least KES 450 (USD 4.20) per month for transportation and printing costs — 4.5% of normal monthly income.
In April 2020, right after schools closed, M-Shule conducted survey among our primary school parents to find out how the situation affected their children and families.
Our parents said:
- Their children’s daily average study time at home was 3 hours 15 minutes, over 60% reduction from normal school study hours.
- 7 out of 10 parents had to purchase supplementary hard copy materials for their children such as textbooks and revision test papers.
- 7 out of 10 parents felt significant financial strain from additional expenses with schools closing. They appreciate platforms for or inexpensive interactive learning.
How can low-tech learning tools fill in the gap?
There has been recent promising evidence that low-tech interventions like SMS and phone calls are effective and impactful methods to increase learning outcomes and decrease learning poverty. A 2020 study in Botswana by Young 1ove, J-PAL and the University of Oxford showed that “combined phone and SMS “low-tech” interventions can generate substantial learning gains”. In their paper titled “School’s Out: Experimental Evidence On Limiting Learning Loss Using “Low-Tech” In A Pandemic’’ there is evidence that low-technology interventions such as combining SMS messaging and phone tutoring can significantly reduce learning gaps by up to 52%, increase time that families spend on education by up to 17%, and increase parents’ abilities to correctly assess their child’s learning level by up to 35%.
As a low-tech SMS intervention, we at M-Shule moved quickly to fill in the resource gap for Kenyan students. M-Shule’s learning platform leverages artificial intelligence to deliver tailored content to primary school learners in Grades 1–8 (ages 5–14) based on their specific grade, performance, and needs, all through SMS. M-Shule provided each student with bite-sized lessons and revision through SMS that supported their classroom content, using their parents’ phones. The system is populated with thousands of curriculum-aligned lessons that can adapt to each student’s level and pace, leveraging best practices from Teaching at the Right Level and structured pedagogy, to fulfill the need for individualized attention. Using past data to select the most useful pieces of content, the system ensures students receive harder questions and lessons as they gain mastery and easier content if they need to build foundational skills.
Due to households’ financial strain, we wanted to ensure that as many learners as possible could learn for free on our platform. We initially provided 2–4 weeks of free learning to our users, and engagement jumped by more than 9 times. We then partnered with organizations like UNHCR’s Humanitarian Education Accelerator and Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity to extend our reach.
But when schools reopened at the beginning of 2021, we wanted to know — how did that SMS content actually impact children’s learning at home?
Checking In: SMS Learning Survey to Kenyan Parents & Students
We conducted a qualitative survey across a sample of 178 of our parents and students that had participated in our learning programs over the past year. We focused this initial survey on parent and student sentiments, motivations, and feedback, since uptake and engagement on any learning platform depends heavily on perceived value. Research on learning outcomes is soon to come!
What motivates you to learn with M-Shule?
We first wanted to learn more about why students and parents were interested in learning (or “revising”) on an SMS platform, as opposed to other options.
The most common responses were that parents and students alike feel that our SMS platform:
- Provides quality and relevant content that is related to their classroom work
- Helps students improve performance and learn independently
- Is convenient and available at any time of day
- Is inexpensive and equally accessible for everyone
Several students and parents noted that an interactive platform like this one “turned every day into a learning day” during the lockdown and gave structure to at-home education in a particularly confusing and challenging time. This was critical when parents were struggling to take care of children at home while pursuing income-generating activities and without much support in educational instruction.
I had extra revision and I was able to get my revision at any time of the day. This enabled me to plan for my day. And not only that, M-Shule really challenged me with the question being given and I believe with this, on K.C.P.E [national standardized] exams I will perform very well. Thanks to M-Shule, my expectations are higher .— Grade 8 student
What motivates the child is the fact that she can ask me questions at home and the child can be easily assisted with no delays. My child won’t be afraid to ask no matter how hard or easy the question is .— Grade 4 parent
This positive feedback was the same across both younger and older learners. While older learners tended to appreciate the extra content and opportunity to improve their skills, younger learners were motivated by the opportunity to read and learn with their parents’ phones.
M-Shule has motivated my child by developing an atmosphere of reading. My child has developed a love of reading and now she has developed a love for learning. Thanks to M-Shule for introducing this form of learning.— Grade 1 parent
Interestingly, the way the lessons were presented were almost as important as the lessons themselves. If an M-Shule learner gets an answer the wrong, our adaptive learning approach provides a “scaffold” or hint to guide the student towards a correct answer, and then asks them to try the question again. This was seen as greatly encouraging and motivating to learners as they adjusted to learning independently outside the classroom.
M-Shule has encouraged my child — most especially, when he gives the wrong answer, you encourage him to try again till he gets the correct answer thus it has made him enjoy doing the revision everyday. — Grade 3 parent
I was able to get the revision at first hand, with no delays and when I was doing my revision the platform always encouraged me to try again when I got the wrong answer. This made me feel appreciated and enabled me to have the interest to learn more with the M-Shule platform .— Class 6 student
Did M-Shule help you prepare to return to class? How?
Students and parents felt overwhelmingly that the M-Shule SMS platform helped them get ready for when schools reopened in January 2021, after 8 months of learning at home. Schools typically give exams at the beginning of each new term to assess where learners are in each of the core subjects, as well as providing class rankings. After 8 months at home, every learner we interviewed said they were well prepared to return to class — and many even improved in their exam scores and rankings as compared to the previous year.
I have really shown great improvement in Mathematics and English and if it was not for M-Shule during the lockdown, I know I would not have scored this great grades. Thank you M-Shule!— Grade 7 learner
My child has really improved in Kiswahili, both in reading and in writing. I am one proud parent, thanks to the services given to us through the revision with Tusome na M-Shule. — Grade 1 parent
I was capable to remember every question sent and what I wrote in my exercise book. When we had the exams most of the questions asked were similar to M-Shule questions. — Grade 8 learner
A great secondary impact was the behavioral and attitude change that many students and parents found after learning on a digital platform. Students felt excited and engaged in their own learning experience.
I was able to answer more questions without being afraid and it has helped to be more confident than the rest of my classmates. — Grade 2 student
I was ready to go back to class and ready to learn. I was so excited to share with my class teacher what I have been doing during the 8 months we have been at home with M-Shule. — Grade 5 student
I was well prepared to go to class. I had a positive attitude towards going back to school because of revising during lockdown and for the very first time I enjoyed every lesson on mathematics because the revision I did made me pass my exams .— Grade 6 student
Was this something that people wanted to continue?
The majority of learners were excited to continue learning and were willing to recommend this approach to a peer.
Where do we go from here?
Now that schools are again closed due to COVID19, we consider the requests from our students. Learners wanted to learn how to use technology for more educational pursuits, to keep improving their performance and excelling in and out of class. How can we use more accessible technologies to do this?
At M-Shule, we will continue to provide SMS content to learners of all ages, and are in the process of adding more subjects and grade levels to our academic learning platform (reach out to partnerships@m-shule.com if you want to partner with us!)
We also support the work of other great initiatives like Keep Kenya Learning, a coalition bringing together edtech, education, research, and policy in helping to keep the nation learning. Check them out at www.keepkenyalearning.com.
