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Liberia leads the way in fighting pandemic learning loss

28th February 2022

The scale of learning loss caused by the Covid pandemic is staggering The World Bank estimates that the impact of school closures has increased the proportion of 10-year-olds unable to read or understand a simple text – so-called “learning poverty” – to 70% in low and middle-income countries

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the figure stood at 90% even before the impact of Covid, the situation is even worse One academic study suggests learning loss of between six months and one year of schooling, multiplying if not addressed to lost learning of 2 8 years for a child in Grade Three by the time they reach Grade 10

In December the Ministry of Education announced the expansion of the Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP), specifically as a key measure in tackling Covid-related learning loss

Launched in 2016 by the Government of Liberia as the Partnership Schools for Liberia, LEAP started as a three-year pilot scheme to test if a PPP model could accelerate improvements in the country’s primary public education system after it had been decimated by 14 years of civil war and the Ebola health pandemic

Bridge Liberia, a NewGlobe program, has been a major partner in LEAP from the beginning And from the beginning, LEAP has focussed on results Its goals include the need to: Establish evidencebased interventions to increase optimal student learning outcomes

Improvements have been clear In Bridge Liberia-supported schools, 81 percent of students who joined in the first grade and have now spent 2½ years in a Bridge Liberia-supported classroom are proficient or basic readers, compared to only 33% of students in traditional public schools.

So it made perfect sense for the Liberian Government to take a program that was already a success and expand it further to combat the impact of covid The expanded LEAP now covers 525 public primary schools in all of Liberia’s 15 counties, giving an additional 60,000 students – 130,000 in all – access to quality education and the opportunity to build a better future Some 70% of LEAP schools are now supported by Bridge Liberia Minister of Education, Professor D Ansu Sonii, said:

“We are proud of the decision we have made to expand our public education partnership program across the country. Liberia has many challenges and we believe that it is only with an educated population now, not in generations to come, that we will overcome them and build a safer and more prosperous future for our people.”

The Education Ministry has now gone further In February it launched an Education Sector Analysis, which will lead on to an Education Sector Plan, due in August That Plan will govern and manage Liberian education for the next 5 years

LEAP is among the key programs forming part of the sector review and plan development process

Strikingly, the drive by Liberia’s Government to use an expanded LEAP in tackling learning loss fits perfectly with the priority solutions promoted by the World Bank, UNESCO, and UNICEF report It starts by highlighting the need for accurate data Such datagathering and analysis has been at the center of LEAP and the work of Bridge Liberia from the beginning

All teachers and school leaders are equipped with a specially-designed tablet which provides LEAP leaders with an enormous amount of real-time data, from attendance to lesson completion and students’ exam results Progress is monitored and recorded

Other “proven techniques” for promoting foundational learning which governments are urged to adopt include extending instructional time, making learning more efficient through targeted instruction and the use of structured pedagogy All are features of LEAP

LEAP schools were the first in Liberia to teach a full school day and LEAP students spend nearly an hour a day longer on academic learning than their peers in other schools Ahead of the expansion of LEAP, Bridge Liberia worked with the Education Ministry to retrain nearly 1,500 government teachers to use modern child-centered pedagogy and technology

The retraining priorities the need for teachers to check on every child’s learning, helping those who are struggling through one-to-one guidance and responding with feedback which accelerates learning

Liberia’s Government has responded to the challenge of covid-related learning loss by focusing on solutions already proven to work, driven by data and with a focus on student outcomes, all supported by scientifically-developed pedagogy and thorough teacher training

It is a blueprint not just for recovering learning loss, but for the transformation of schools and of educational outcomes for Liberian children.

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