Reflections on Education in sub-Saharan Africa — Part 1: Leapfrogging in Education

“Education is the Great Equalizer.” At some point in most people’s lives, they have heard this famous statement and for many people it is a statement that holds a lot of meaning. If a nation is able to educate its people, it is expected that it should perform better economically and socially as a result. Research in education shows however that the inverse also holds true. Learning outcomes are better for the more affluent countries and the more affluent communities within countries. In many ways it feels like the chicken and egg dilemma. So should developing countries focus on Education or the Economy as they try to catch up to the developed nations? This is a challenge for policy makers and key players in education, particularly in Africa that I hope like myself, are excited to think about. The following is the first of a multi-part series of posts reflecting on my time working for the Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation in Sierra Leone as part of the Data Science and Innovation team for Education. Feel free to share or comment below.

All countries and education ministries/departments around the world outline what kind of education they want to offer their citizens. It is with this in mind (hopefully) that they draft policies and propose initiatives. While this is the starting point for any policy maker or educator, I have decided that this is not for me to choose and instead focus on how to get to the destination once it has been determined. There are in general a set of goals that education in every country strives to achieve at different levels like:

• Literacy
• Elementary math
• Collaborative skills
• Civility
• Employability etc.

For over a century now, the standard way that a person is expected to gain these skills over time is by attending a school in contrast to the apprentice-master model more commonly used before schools were widely accepted. While there may be debate in some parts of Education literature about whether the school system is the best way to go about educating children, for the purpose of practicality, I will assume that it is the best way for developing countries to educate their citizens and convincing a nation otherwise would likely be futile. Because educational systems in many developing countries still fall far short of their counterparts in more developed nations there is still a lot more work to do to improve access and quality of education. This is where we are and I believe this is a good starting point: How do we take the school systems that we have and change them in a practical way that results in the best learning outcomes?

The concept of leapfrogging is one that is thrown around a lot in relation to development in Africa, particularly when it comes to the Tech world. In the same way that most people jumped straight to using mobile and smartphones without using landlines is it possible to leapfrog in education? I think the answer is yes but we have to tread carefully. An advantage with education is that we have a good sense of what we want the outcomes to be as listed above. In addition, education research has been blossoming over the last century allowing us not only to leapfrog in a random direction but to do so in a way we have confidence what we do will work.

From the EdTech boom to cognitive science, the opportunities for improving learning outcomes are exciting. Many successes and many failures of innovations in education are now documented with analysis and reflection. One thing has stood out to me in the greatest success stories and in the greatest failures in education, particularly K-12 education. The greatest success stories tend to involve a talented, excited group of teachers. An example is the ridiculously competitive process by which public school teachers are employed in South Korea where only about the top 5% of each graduating class of pre-service teachers go on to teach in public schools. Policies that resulted in this raised Korea’s literacy levels from 22% in 1945 to 87.5% in 1970 and now South Korean students regularly score the highest in international assessments (there are of course contextual causes and problems that arise in the case study). See Success and Education in South Korea.

The greatest failures or those that give only marginal improvements tend to try to bypass the teacher or fail to align well with the teacher’s preferences. Examples include the One Laptop Per Child Programs, Facebook’s SUMMIT program and many other examples where technology/teaching practices are introduced prematurely. Learning science also strongly suggests that the quality of a teacher is the most significant factor in determining a group’s learning outcomes and the interests of students. This can be seen in A School With No Heat or Computers but Many College-Bound Students. Mostly Girls by Rod Nordland.

It is with this in mind that I believe any sustainable improvement in the learning outcomes of a nation should be grounded in improving teachers and not in replacing them with technology or removing their influence without good reasoning. Teachers here need not only include those in schools, it could also mean experts with interns, parents with their children, and of course, the mechanic and their apprentice. It could also mean replacing the absence of a human teacher with a technology, worksheets, games or other learning materials. With this guiding principle in hand, below are some ways I believe education can leap frog in Africa.

Improving the lives and working conditions of teachers

I wanted to get this one out of the way from the get-go since it is important but it is definitely not the only piece of the puzzle. Teachers all around the world are underpaid and often under appreciated. Where possible, governments should strive to offer teachers better pay, social security and benefits such as health, transport, etc. Besides motivating the current workforce, it gives the teacher title the respect it deserves and makes it a desirable job which leads to competition. Competition then results in an improvement of the quality of teachers due to the selective process that follows. Many countries in Africa are short of teachers and not many people aspire to be teachers, hopefully this can change in the future.

Continuous Professional Development

There are numerous methods of teaching that could be applied from the learning sciences, which continue to be advised by our growing understanding of how people learn. Teachers however, tend to not have access to this valuable information as it resides in the realm of academia. How then do we make the connection between what the learning sciences tell us and what happens on a daily basis in classrooms? The typical answer is Professional Development (PD) but I argue that a 3 day workshop at the beginning of a school year is not enough. In the same way the students in a classroom learn through practice and iteration, so do teachers and they need to be motivated and assessed in doing so. This is where the role of administrators and peers come in. As an example, if a school wants to encourage more formative assessment, the principal could require an informal, bi-weekly report from a teacher on the performance of students or a term transcript as opposed to waiting until the final examination. There are many ways to go about this, and a lot could be learned by learning from how other institutions go about developing their teachers but it has to result in continuous improvement for which the teacher is accountable.

Improve Pre-service Teacher Training

Pre-service teachers here are those who are enrolled in teacher training institutions and have not yet been placed in schools. This is perhaps the lowest hanging fruit in some cases. In addition to teaching the important skills of classroom management, developing curricula and others, this is an opportunity for pre-service teachers to practice being teachers by being in a student’s shoes. Instructors need not always lecture pre-service teachers, they can do examples of the kind of teaching techniques they talk about, no matter how ‘silly’ they may seem for adults. Another extremely crucial key in today’s society that many teacher training institutions in developing countries do not emphasize is teaching the teachers how to learn for themselves from the internet as well as how to teach students how to learn from the internet. Pre-service teachers can be exposed to teaching techniques from around the world, be encouraged and tested on their knowledge on the most recent literature and join various online communities of teachers that help each other in designing classroom activities, assessments and curricula. The way people learn today is different from 20 years ago. If teacher training institutions find themselves clinging onto the ways of old, they need to rethink their strategy.

Anyone can be a teacher

The role of the community can be significant in improving learning outcomes. In this regard, there is good reason to design and implement effective ways for more knowledgeable people (experts) to interact with learners in any setting. Whether it is through shadowing a professional, building community centers for the youth, hosting low cost events/competitions involving educational games, advising parents on how to help their children etc. There is a lot to explore in this space and various case studies of how people are trying to do it around the world.

Fighting education malpractice

This is a huge problem in many countries and it is most often prevalent in educational systems that depend on one metric of assessment, typically an examination at the end of a school level. To ensure the integrity of the results, very strict measures have to be put in place as well as enforceable consequences for cheaters and of course these cost money. The sheer amount of money spent on the American SATs, which still suffer from malpractice every now and then is a prime example. From the secure printing and distribution of papers, to the invigilation, to the grading, there are so many places where things could go wrong, particularly if a number of people along the chain could be ‘tempted’ into malpractice due to financial instability. Personally, I am a bigger fan of the transcript model where a student is assessed not just by the one examination at the end of each school level but by their continued progress with all the highs, the lows, the improvements and the failures so that the picture is more holistic, less prone to unexpected results and it is harder to cheat even if the assessments are designed in house by a teacher and not very secure. But perhaps more importantly than how a transcript would give employers and higher education a better picture, I anticipate that this will change student attitudes. When cheating is not really an option and they are constantly challenged and encouraged to study more they are likely to put more effort. Why study now for an exam 2 years from now? This is what all this is really about, improving the learning outcomes which is not always reflected in a final examination score.

So while there are so many challenges in improving education, there is so much that can be done at the national policy level, regional levels, school levels, all the way to the home and many things can be done that can be sure to improve outcomes. The most important thing to keep in mind in any solution is that ultimately it must affect the child, the learner. The greatest restructuring can happen at the highest levels but as long as the student’s situation is not improving, it all means nothing. The best way to affect the child is by activating the sources of learning in their space, the teachers, the books, the computer, the games etc. The number, quality and happiness of school teachers is an obvious place for policy makers to focus but this requires that the students go to school. How do we get the students in the classroom? This is a question for part 2 of this series.