Postdoc Working Group "Rethinking Accelerated Learning": Online Public Lecture 28 November 2024

Postdoc Working Group "Rethinking Accelerated Learning": Online Public Lecture 28 November 2024

Title: Postdoc Working Group "Rethinking Accelerated Learning": Online Public Lecture 28 November 2024
Abstract: Under the theme ‘Accelerated Education Programmes for Out-of-School Young People in Africa’, on 28th November 2024, Ms. Miriam Tusiimire from War Child Canada and Ms. Fatu Yumkella from Dalan Development Consultants (Sierra Leone) presented various models of accelerated literacy programmes.

Find out more about the Postdoc Working Group here: https://www.bayreuth-academy.uni-bayreuth.de/en/postdoc-working-groups/Rethinking-Accelerated-Learning/index.html
Date: February 24, 2025
Language: English
has URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzICQiOxI94
Transcript: um and welome everybody my name is qu Ang and I am a sociologist of Education uh I'm currently working at koven University um today I'm very pleased to chare this session and also introduce our um work and our ambition for the working group and I thank so much maram and fat to um who has kindly agreed to deliver the lecture today um I would like to um say a few words about the concept of acceler accelerated learning uh when you uh hear the words accelerated learning you already think of time and space um so in term of times it's it suggests that it's in a shorter time frame um in term of space I think we refer to formal uh in school um in University but we also look at informal learning space uh which is outside School uh ad learning as a workplace we also look at learner who are the learner the learner could be preschool um school children the school a children um higher education student it could also be adult learner but even uh with politician who learn policy from elsewhere but a common feature is to learn it in a faster way um I refer to the work of Janna market maret and marus um mentioned a few area that I think is very relevant for today so before I introduce the speakers I would like to look at a few things that we um Talk um about when we mention accelerated learning we're talking a lot about the impact or in the simple words it advantaged and concern um so the advantage of um accelerated learning it often refer to Shorter cost um um it mean it reduce cost and time it's uh in a way it effective but it also improved the learner experience um is many more with our Stu our speakers will talk about today but there are some concerns as well um the biggest concern is about lower lowering standards um and normally Narrows the scope of learning um and restrict the freedoms of learner so we we have a few thing on the table today and today we focusing on informal or non in a way that is not in the mainstream education um in uh an education system and today I would like to introduce our first speaker um maram um so Mariam is um the head of program of accelerated education program for out of school children and I would like to use this opportunity to invite maram toir to um take the floor and introduce herself um and then uh we will have about 25 minutes um for each speaker at the end we'll have 40 minutes for the open discussion I would like to introduce the first speakers and then when the next speaker Fatu um um start I would invite her to in to introdu herself later I hope you agree with that maram um floor is is your please can you hear absolutely can you hear me yes we can hear you welcome thank you um good morning good afternoon depending on where everybody's joining uh I'm Miriam toir I head programs at War child Canada um I'm actually in transit to Canada so forgive the nonformal environment for a moment I'm going to also be giving a presentation on this kind of work that we do um so uh just do I speak about myself or do I go straight into the presentation you you have a few word about yourselves and then I will stop sharing my screen and then um I let you share your screen yeah oh great yes so uh colleagues have been in the humanitarian space for some time uh I first worked for plan International looking at young people especially Youth and women and children for their participation and then I work for Save the Children looking at re-entry programs into the education Arena and uh if you know Pastor communities and the challenges they face so worked around um accelerated basic education and later worked with oxfarm to address the humanarian needs of of refugees uh and now I I work at what child can as a head programs so I've been around out of school young people in crisis for some time uh and as I headed um um emergency response at Care International we were providing protection Education Health different services but the issue of school dropout is still high so now we do re-entry programs um a bridged versions uh with war child Canada and today I'll share with you a bit about our experience and for those that are in the Academia you can check that out on the things you're learning uh we are interested as watch Canada in academic research mainly to see um this short comprehensive period of time supplementing the already existing knowledge of the Learners does it contribute to Better Learning outcomes or even the future that young people uh actually want so that's what I'm going to share with you this um afternoon or morning thank you open to hearing from you yeah thank you very much and we are learning from what happened on the ground and I'll stop sharing my screen and let maram to share her slides wait uh confirm that you can see Mas yes we can see your slide all right um so I'm picking an experience of what is happening right now uh we are currently running primary a and secondary a the two are funded by UNF and the Master Card Foundation we also had some grants from the philanthropist um especially from the US uh but have since closed so the goal of what I'm presenting is how we are returning out of school young people to school through accelerated education as a way of bridging up uh learners back to mainstream education and Beyond the Beyond refers to when a program ends and L may decide to join a vocational training program may decide to join employment and you'll see that when I talk about the trajectory of Pathways try and make sure them within the few minutes okay so I want to briefly speak about what child Canada realize I had this in so our history really as what Shanda is that um we were founded so that we can provide long-term Solutions um to problems caused by conflict and so we hope that our work we can accelerate Peace by disrupting the cycle of Violence by driving generational change for hardest heat while we invest in local communities um and these local communities we make sure we are not similar in each Community we work with each country according to each country's need so we Empower um children living in armed conflict by focusing on education Justice and uh livelihood so those our key three themes and they are interrelated in a sense that we believe if young boys and girls and women and their families are in education and access opportunities of training and financial support and they also have protection and U and Justice they able to live dignified lives so for this session I'm quickly going to speak about a just to show you how the program has brought over 8,000 Learners back to school and then um talk about on our recommendations and request that we might have to people on this platform and hope we can end with a dialogue around what opportunities do exist to accelerate and um progress and really support for accelerate education programs so before you is the trajectory of Education in Uganda um if you can see my C or to the little children at the bottom the 0 to three at the bottom where you see the red are the rates of school dropout and on the upper also are other education Pathways that are not necessarily in the mainstream so at 03 for Uganda it's mainly supported by private sector um but you can take to ecd and at that level we have Learners dropping out and then you have primary which is from primary 1 to primary 4 usually around 8 to 10 years and if the refugees sometimes up to 20 they're still in primary and then primary 5 to 7 and then Senior one senior 4 five and six at five and six you can enter University directly employment and other different ways but at at the bottom are drop out are people who drop out of that foral system and join other U nonformal you know programs but in the end they also end up on the extreme right where they end up in employment then on the upper are also other opportunities that those who don't continue on a path of primary secondary University at the end of primary 7 they can join a training vocational um and Skilling program and eventually end up at University or all of us in the world of work so with that what is a then so for What Child which is also one of the common definitions with the inter agency Network on education it's an age it's a flexible age appropriate program um aimed really at bringing those that are disadvantaged or overage or they have been out of school for a while back to school uh and for Uganda particularly this Falls under the nonformal education sector although as you will see in a few minutes that it is hosted through the mainstream education uh but really provided to children or adents who cannot gain access to formal education due to various hindrances at War child Canada it can be due to conflict uh pregnancy uh Poverty of course marriage um family separation or child neglect um so the background is that um they the Uganda accet education program has been in existence since the 2008 um when the Education Act made approvation for AE and the examples of similar programs that we did run was the alternative basic education for carja which is a region that has um C Keepers and they were not returning to school then they tried the basic education for urban poverty we tried the complimentary opportunity for primary education and then child centered alternative nonformal education all these were really aimed at bringing back Learners to school um and the goal is that a provides Learners with equivalent certified competences and then it reduces and removes barriers to accessing education while providing C up so that you can at least complete and for Uganda you can complete primary living examination you see a paper and then you complete or Uganda certificate of Education we do not run a in high school so how does it work um we work with a community to identify a school which can host this school can either be primary or secondary it hosts the learner so that if a learner goes to Miriam's secondary school or Miriam Primary School um they identify with that school and then we work with the communities who have to have the buying because they the ones who know why the Learners are out of school and through advocacy and Leadership we address the barriers um at Community level so those are usually social barriers if let's say girls are not allowed to go to school we do the community to promote girls returning to school if they feel that those who are married but underage should stay married but don't access education also address those social norms around that so by engaging the community prior to opening so we have a host school we have a community buying and then we devise a mobilization strategy and I'm going to show you what that looks like in a second and then we in involve stakeholders our district um for w child Canada particularly we worked with the Ministry of Education Plus the national curriculum Development Center to ensure is appropriate curriculum for this kind of education once they're okay with the curriculum we recruit teachers again we are recruiting from the pool that of already existing teachers and then training them on how to abridge the curriculum at hand so I talked about a minute ago on mobilization strategy and this is an example of a mobilization strategy are you a young mother who wants to resume your secondary school education and this will know be interpreted in various languages uh we talk about criteria for enrollment and this was for secondary school and once we talk about the criteria for enrollment uh we also tell some benefits if you enroll as a mother you'll be supported with your baby so again because work with a community we have provision of how the babies can also come to school and the support around that uh we also have are you a youth who dropped out of lower secondary and you want to resume you know readon so kind of encourage you to join and then we use an enrollment form you know so that we can collect information from the beginning that we don't have to ask again but these are just tools um I was sharing you so for primary education what would it look like U there is a fear that AR we compressing too much in a short period of time so you're in primary school for only three years but how does that work if you're overage but you had finished let's say primary 2 but you never went to primary 3 you would join level one so you can't join level one um if you've never been to school but if you are mature like you maybe 15 but you've never been to school you can join level one but you would stay in level one until you pass the assessment exam you have to be able to assess if you have the right competence to join level two and then for level two uh if you were in primary 4 or in grade 43 or grade five because for Uganda we have to primary 7even but you never graduated to the next class P six primary six then you would sit in level two so if you had completed your primary 4 and never went primary 5 you join primary 5 if you are in primary five but you never start the exam you also stay in level two if you were in primary six but you forgot you also come back to level two so in level two you would sit and uh the exam at the end of one year so that you qualify for primary six and seven and then for level three if you had also been in primary six or seven but never start the transitional exam you can stay uh if you've graduated from level two but you're overage you can go to level three but there are things that you can't just do for example if you if you never spent four years before reaching level three you cannot graduate from level three because primary you should have spent at least six to seven years six years if you're very mature um and seven years if you're young and you had already spent some of those years in your original country or at home if you got married let's say at primary five you already had done five years in school so you need two more years to prepare you for secondary um and then at primary 7even you examined by the ugand national examinations board where you sit primary leaving examination and get a certificate if we slightly go back to this for a minute um so if you sit primary 7even you can join vocational although the certificate um is still at a really low level but you can be certified and work in um a work- based learning kind of environment so you don't have to continue Secondary School especially if you feel uh you're too old for that we discourage that but if someone feels you know they want to focus on their families we wouldn't stop them and we make the provision available for them to enjoy that so for secondary there are two levels all level which is ordinary level in Uganda has four classes um you cannot sit level two if you've not spent four years um between when you graduated primary 7 and and level two this is to discourage people from thinking that AE is the solution to taking shorter time in school you have to have set primary four years before you SE secondary level two exam so level one again we bring um those that were in Secondary School but did not finish senior one and Senior two so they sit for level one and then level two is also for those that were in senior 3 and Senior 4 but they never got a chance to sit the exam so they also sit the exam but if you do not um in the second term or third term you you take an assessment to measure your Readiness to exit Secondary School currently all the subjects that foral schools have have been developed or bridged into an a curriculum um so assessments we do formative assessments these are assessed regularly and then we record those tests I'll talk about a challenge there is that in the new Competency Based curriculum that East Africa is um applying it's been difficult to assess accelerate education because the those assessments are per year so because we have only two years we're still discussing in terms of how can we structure the assessments uh so that they meet the expected um expected grades otherwise at the end of the two years you didn't have hit the grades required um but because of the subjects are all available the national curriculum Development Center is working with us to get that resolved and then there's activity of integration uh currently again in the Competency Based curriculum those projects that learners in a are also having to do them and through the clubs and life skill trainings they also get a chance to explore what else can they do because sometimes they are quite um of age um it's also flexible so that at each level from level one in primary you can Transit if you feel that you have attained not feel if you pass you qualify and you can go to the next level we facilitate you to move to the mainstream education so you don't stay in that transition education for long and then a Lear who ready to move to foral does so without limitation so also supported on that transition so in terms of impact as perceived by the local people uh I've just saidd to use a story of um this husband and wife they signed consent to share their pictures so the husband uh first joined a and he felt was good because now he's employed and encourage the wife to also come so there's a bit of positive um perception towards a there are so many other Learners who were having violence in their marriages they had separated they had left and going back home some had become pregnant which has been the biggest issue especially teenage pregnancy uh they were able to return to school and those that were struggling especially language if you know that refugees from drsc in sometimes from South Sudan who don't understand the language they find a flexible because for primary we have interpreters uh and at the moment we are exploring a language bridging uh session which we already have agencies that are doing that I do time two minutes um so again to perception when we come into a school we're also able to contribute to classroom blocks because a good learning environment definitely contributes to Better Learning outcome comes so for war child Canada we try to do construction 28 so the community finds that there's contribution so that Beyond a when the Learners finally settle and they can continue with mainstream they still have classrooms that can sustain uh the added numbers so at the moment we have uh 3,877 Learners that time in school uh last year 81 qualified for high school through Secondary School uh and you can see 1,224 have been registered for UC which is going to complete I think this week or next week um their graduates have received scholarships to go to advanced level which is high school so because of those opportunities people are happy to um identify with a some key considerations um working with Ministry of Education and sports enables the ministry to understand what's happening so they can capture that content in the education management information system and uh they're the ones that guided on how to aach the curriculum so one of the question was would Learners Miss on something um they said well there may be certain subjects and really challenging for the learner to read everything but they hope that they're coming back to school to catch upon what they had missed out so that is still a bit challenging um on selection of host schools uh sometimes not every stakeholder will understand what you're aiming at doing um we consider proximity to Learners and construct wash facilities uh classrooms just to make sure they're also inclusive inclusive in a sense that either person with disability although the issue of uh def is still challenging but at least access in terms of ramps sitting Arrangement the way the teachers are are teaching that is considered and stakeholders are always be good to people because on that support enrollment of the right people we have various structures we use like the mother to mother is an approach where mothers monitor the attendance of other mothers so that if a mother is not attending regularly they can follow up to see what's happening with that mother uh the village education committees equally support on Learners to check on them and why they are maybe dropping out or if they have any challenges uh Center education committees what you see as CC Center education committees equally um um committees that are able to support in governing um the school um so this there are subjects I think have to go through those um the principles of of a can be found uh anywhere but it has to be flexible it has to address the legitimacy of the program the curriculum has to be done with support from sorry I have broken up for a few minutes I'm my phone yeah so it has that materials have to be done with support from government because they the ones who eventually own uh the curriculum um teachers have to be oriented on the new curriculum so that they can adjust the way teaching is done yeah um and then the center has to be well managed otherwise issues of safeguarding um are a big deal because the Learners are mature and sometimes it may be the Learners that are having sexual or favor advances to the teachers and non teaching staff some challenge of course language where can be an issue certain countries some husbands not allowing their wives to attend some wives being uncomfortable with their husbands going to school and them staying home um generally while child Canada is running quite a number of ACC education programs there are other programs so we don't necessarily have harmonization of implementation so hope that can be addressed POS be really really good um lack of specific a teacher training at the moment is available teachers um there's also a program of teaching in crisis um uh that teachers are required to go through at least acceptable program in humanitarian programming um often there's sufficient funding uh for African countries the issue of teenage pregnancy is a big deal so we have a lot of Learners out of school and also in terms of Academia we're really looking for idence to support a uh from a program perspective we like it there's challenges so it would be nice that we invest some resources into academic research uh tressing these Learners sometimes is very difficult and expensive um yeah so I'll stop there thank you I can take one or two questions thank you very much um this is really interesting it very refreshing view from what happened on the grounds and what um challenges and also what success and the defi definition of success is very interesting any very quick we have one minute very quick clarification question before we move on to the next speaker please yes please um yeah I I just have one I use my oh yes uh y minina please Professor do do you hear me yes we can hear you okay okay thank you for a very enlightening presentation it actually give us a clear idea of what is done in the field and how uh other experiences can start when there is none H my uh uh question because I have been reflecting on the issue in my country Morocco uh how are these people who join such programs motivated to join the program that is if people are working on family providers uh uh are there any uh Financial is there any financial support for them so that they invest their time rather in education instead of going to work uh and so on so that's one of the key questions personally I have been looking at and trying to see even when discussing the thing with stakeholders here how uh actually to motivate because if there is no motivation I I'm afraid people may not uh really join such programs thank you should I respond now yes of course I don't know uh yeah I'm happy to resp so um when a when uh I'll say a girl but even the boys when they want to go to school qan you muted um when they want to go to school they will come when they know they don't have the for example they don't have to wear a uniform they don't have to be there the whole day um sometimes we study for a shorter period of time where the community requires that they don't pay school fees which is an issue in in in our country they don't pay school fees they don't have to change their hairstyles um they just have to follow the school rules and regulations uh others will come because they now can come with their children especially for the mothers that's a motivation uh for the boys it's the idea that they don't have to spend four years in school they can spend two years and go and find get a certificate and find work because that certificate is very important at least most even the small data entrant must have completed level two which is a secondary school for so they know that okay two years it's okay I can manage um that would and also the the safety at the school especially for the ladies you know the violence is addressed you know that I'm safe so they really come so we don't have Financial motivation but the numbers have been quite like one Center will have 100 and 200 Learners in a thank you thank you very much it's really good that you clarify that for us especially on the uh motivation of Learners female learner I would like to move on to the next because there will be more question and I would like to invite you all to type your question in the chat as well so the speaker can have some time to prepare uh answers uh later so I would like to um invite to the to the screen Fatu Yun K from Dal development Consultants uh company um she has a very interesting um experience too in Ghana um to to share with us uh can you hear us please come on the screen and have a few words about yourself um and about the the work that you do and then uh you have about 25 minutes for your presentation please Fatu thank you very very much thank you very much Kanan and uh for the opportunity to share our experience I'm fat yela I'm uh I'm from sier Leon and I'm the founder and um uh CEO for danan development Consultants dalan is a a research and development Consulting agency in si Leon and um and in this instance we actually got an opportunity to to work together in a regional Consortium with um other agency in Ghana Associates for Change and and the uh Center for studies in for studies of economies in Africa based in Nigeria so together the three of us won a a gpe grant kicks Grant to um undertake a multicountry study looking at the effective of of APs because I guess the whole idea is um um we've um benefited from Miriam's experience of what is happening on the ground so like um um idc's interest was then to look at how do we convince policy makers you know with maybe real hard data to now illustrate the um um effectiveness of APs so that would presentation I also shared with um qan as part as I mean just some promising features that we're seeing which have been highlighted already is a Word document as a handout which we have time um we could also talk around um but I will focus on the PowerPoint presentation that we have uh prepared I shared it with qan would you like to project or should I it's your off oh sorry she's yeah sorry can you can you share your slide so it can control the speed um where you um want to go back or forth so it's better just you share it I unless you um everybody who speaker can share the slide yeah okay so sorry I have to get someone to help do that that's the slide there up [Music] to not get to get to this to the folder this is it is that sharing now yes sharing your screen yes is it coming yeah it's coming it's coming yes okay can you open it yeah see sorry for the delay I sometimes can you see it yes yes it come up it's not it's the slide but not on the screen now not not yeah see my screen are are you seeing my screen yes we can see your screen yeah that's very small okay is this I just to can you put but I can see all right so if you can see my screen so maybe I'll just uh run you through but can you use the diaporama option all right okay option it's it's on the bottom where you can see English us up up there yes exactly yeah good wonderful thank you right okay all right so sorry for the delay I I I needed help internal help no problem no problem right so um you would see on the um the the research is about a comparative study of aaps and G Focus programs in Ghana Nigeria and seron and I've already introduced um uh the three agencies that are involved um AFC in Ghana um Center for studies in Nigeria and dalan in um in si Leon uh and and um so to kick start um um I think uh we just wanted to sort of table the emphasis that we are seeing now the global emphasis on on girls education um to achieve gender equality we're all aware that um all the global platforms including the education for all Millennium development goals and Social Development goals and all of them to promote um gender equality and the need to empower women for not only for Quality education as well so in the Consortium or the funding agent idrc idrc is also committed to looking at um to making sure that girls as I mean also get kind of equal opportunity as boys um an exposure to education for inclusion and empowerment so um to to to look at these um our findings for this particular presentation we have organized the findings around the consideration idfc consideration when looking at Effectiveness from a gender equality and Equity um and in uh inclusion perspective the framework um identifies that you look at six aspects if you want we want to look at um effectiveness so it's not only about are they doing well are they staying in terms of retention but also we you look at the domains of the context of the operation how the beneficiaries are selected um what was what is participation what does participation look like um how are they transitioning um are we seeing retention and what kind of outcomes are we saying so um for this presentation given the time available I have chosen to look at um three key aspects the context of operation um the whole domain of transition and then looking at outcomes not only from learning outcomes but also from empowerment from the perspective of the Learners themselves so and for this um presentation I'm drawing material from the Ghana from our counterparts in Ghana Associates for Change and also from s Leon um um from from s Leon okay let me so what you're seeing on the screen is um we we in s Leon we chose three um um agencies that were offering um Accel that offered accelerated education in the past and those are the three that are layered I mean bra um um the LA program you could see the the um um number of CH of of of girls enrolled they save the children and also the Ministry of Education they um also had an accelerated learning program but then I mean in terms of context the main drives of drivers of out of school I think are very common and unnown and mayia actually highlighted some of them many um could be linked to the economy um with parents not being a I mean um able to send um to be able to get what the the their children need for the formal schooling um um that I highlighted you also have social cultural factors which could be you know a preference of sending boys versus girls to school um um children who have become orphaned um while they're in the school age teenage PR pregnancy and children who are just in frustr situations so those are the ones who are targeted by these um um NOS to enroll them and get them back to school so we um so we looked at these three separate programs in in in studying the the whole phenomenon of transition and learning outcomes as well in in the Ghana context um the the barriers for boys and girls May differ slightly but for girls it cuts across in many African context where early marriage against frustrate teenage pregnancy and the prioritization of boys education at the expense of girls are key factors whereas when it comes to boys sometimes it's the demand on the family related activities that keep them away from school so the Ghana context we um they were looking at three other agencies and I have given the names of the agencies at the top afri kids gilbe and school for Life the periods of operation and the targets that were for each um for each um um agency but in both the sier Leon context and the ga and the Ghana context we learned that U and I was very pleased to see it in the Uganda model as as the community domain actually plays an important role communities um take ownership of the of the aeps in um in in Sion what we found is the communities will be the ones to identify the space for the for the for the AP Learners to have um to to um be um um um to get exp opposed to to the aaps sometimes they even Institute bylaws once they are um The Beneficial have enrolled to ensure that um the parents realize that they have to support them to school because um one of the uh member just asked about motivation so so one that could be a motivation factor which we found in Sone that communities are so involved that they can Institute bylaws once children enrolled in the aaps the bylaws the parents have to adhere to the bws to make sure that they get to to to to school so um in terms of the results I'll go now to the transition and in this case um I chose to highlight the Ghana example um the experience in transition and this is for one of the education innovators which was gilit um if you look at the you know like um I mean the figures displayed you would see the large amount of children that were enrolled in total for example in this case it's about 1,983 and out of that we see that about 89% actually were transitioned into primary school because in Ghana these agencies were focused in getting children um in exposing them to AAP and then transision in them to within nine months get them to have gone through the entire I mean curricular to get them into various stages in the primary school so 89% were transitioned the other um um education innovator which is school for life also had um similarly very good results um based on our study by studying their data um not only did they enroll such a huge man from 2010 over 60,000 but they were able to transition 51,000 into primary school so that was the transition RIS was 86% so that in itself if is a measure of success if we're looking at Effectiveness from a transition point of view in the next slide we I would look at um outcomes but this time looking at outcomes drawing data from sier Leon and here we use the standard international I'm sure you all aware of that test the segra test in which um um it's um split into two the tests could be word reading or reading and comprehension for word reading we looked at um we studied the the um AP beneficiaries who had actually completed primary but they are now in secondary school level they've joined the formal Secondary School level and so we compared them with um similar number of pups who are also in the same school and at the same level and we looked at um how they performed on these to so in other words we're look we're looking at comparing of those who are being exposed to a how are they doing when they get to formal school when they transition compared to those those who have been in the former school system throughout their um school life so we did that for word reading reading and comprehension and all these studies were done in um in the in the districts that were that were um you had a bra you had um the Ministry of Education and also save the children um implementing their their AAP programs so I mean the two graphs that you see are the results that we got when we compared um a beneficiaries who are now in secondary school how they performed in word reading and also by gender the graphs show show very clearly that um if you if you look at a versus non a non a means those who have been in the formal system then it's very clear that the performance is is is is you know at par so if we're going to I mean um convince policy makers the convincing point is even those who are done so many years of primary schooling for example compared to those who only did half of that time or exposure when they get to Secondary School their performance is the same and we're looking at reasonable numbers here I think the numbers if I if I um it's like U maybe 144 for um boys let me just make sure I get the num straight yeah 144 were boys and 380 were girls in this assessment see but it's also clear that the girls they had a lower score average score than the boys whether they are from a or the Nona courts so that's interesting that if you look at G just looking at gender whether you're comparing APS with a boys and a girls the boys did better for example the boys um from the AAP cohort scored about 70% whereas the girls from the APAP SC 54 but the difference is about the same even when you look at non AAP so something is going on there when it comes to absorption for learning when you compare boys and girls um the other test was reading and comprehension here um I think the the we we start we we saw even performance which was we were curious about I mean why are we seeing in this case that when it goes to the same boys and girls take reading and comprehension now the scores sort of even out you are seeing that in each gender group you know um the scores are about 60% if you check boys the scores are 60% girls the scores are 60% however within um nons and aeps within the nons will be performing slightly better although the difference is not significant so in pondering at for example at the girls performance um we tend to think that um we haven't even looked into the the causes in detail but we're beginning to feel that maybe the expose the girls having to go back and do other things at home and not having to much time to maybe concentrate on the AAP work or the their reading abilities that's what we we're seeing we're also seeing the gender attributes at play outside the aeps so again if we look at the the um the secondary school level this time we only looked at girls at the secondary School level so again we were seeing that among the girls those who have not been in APAP programs consistently performed better and and the difference is significant so we're seeing are we seeing a scenario where as girls as as um those who've been exposed to a get into Secondary School to the higher level of secondary school then the those who have not been in the AAP program tend to be doing better but it's something that we want to look at further we're talking with the Ministry of Education to be able to study this phenomenon and so that we can better understand what's going on in terms of um um um um performance when um of aaps as they move up the academic ladder so now let's look at impact now from an empowerment perspective and from their own perspective um to to to to for to summarize we sort of what we saw is um as we gathered um through qualitative research is most of the quotes where we been centered around four um um directions we were seeing breakthroughs for reading and writing I mean they were very enthusiastic about their ability to Now read and write we also tease out that a stimulate resilience confidence triggers confidence and empowerment that aeps builds confidence and strengthens economies but a very striking one is their recognition that um with when the exposure to APS they they are more um sort of unlikely to engage in early sex and it seems to be imagine that if we can look at it from a broader perspective that APS is could be a prevention strategy against um teenage pregnancy and child marriage um because of the better negotiation skills so I'll run through I w't read through the the the quotes but you can pick out a few if you look at some of the quotes we got for breakthrough for reading and writing just the top quote this is all EX extracted from Ghana the word confidence I can now read and I can now read and I can write well and those were coming out if we move to the some of the quotes that point to to resilence and empowerment um again it's Ghana we highlighted a lot of the material we got from Ghana they now have some um this is a an AP female who is in primary six I now have confidence to stay in school and complete because I can now read and write well and and um and then and it say and I've never been to school before but I've gain enough knowledge through this program and we also seeing beyond the reading Beyond is the confidence about how I dress how I I present myself to go to school how I organize myself so we were seeing empowerment from those perspective confidence again two more quotes and these are from Sierra Leon H help me to have a positive mindset this is one a beneficiary who is now looking forward to go to college finish education and go to college and this is another one who is going thinking of going to the world of work and um um from the bra cohort where she thinks that I'll be doing I now know how to do soap and I can now support my family right so um as a prevention strategy again the teacher taught us how to prevent Str it has helped me to shapee My Life by introducing us to various cont contraceptives so I I mean having I mean those are the key findings and and um to wrap up we have organized our um sort of recommendations based on the data we're seeing around what should the government of of Ghana seron Nigeria be doing what should the education Educators focus on and what about the community so um I think what is standing up for us as uh on the policy platform is for is for governments to recognize that aeps during those two or three years they're taking girls out of school I mean into the the the the program they it could serve as a strategy to reduce teenage pregnancy and early marriage and so if they look at it from that point of view then they could increase the investments in the for um for aeps so that we sort of get more equity in the in the girls um that are get education in terms of the education innovators even though a number of our innovators that we studied um invested in boys and girls but um the investment in in girls is actually showing promise so we're urging them to continue to apply guide centered models and then but we want to we want to highlight the reading proficiency that we're seeing in terms of gender disparities where the boys are doing very well compared to the girls and then um um um we we we shouldn't forget the facilitators who are driving the process the facilitators who are driving the process because I think in Sion we it's only now I believe the government is trying to pay attention to these facilitators how are they trained to be able to to to to to D to impart knowledge to make sure that they are also well prepared and we're also urging that perhaps if we also encourage or get more female facilitators that would also help at the community level the communities are really contributing to making sure but I I think the orge now is to make sure that they increase their contribution to aaps now that we're seeing that you know the that the aaps are a benefit in terms of learning and in terms of empowerment so um thank you very much so this is the the slide that um is looking at Effectiveness the handout we can talk around as we go into the discussion phase thank you again

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