Title: Cambodia GPE Covid-19 Education Sector Response and Recovery Programme: Support for quality continuous distance learning and remedial education
Location: National
Timing: January 2021 – June 2021
Budget: $76,389
Donor: UNICEF through KAPE Cambodia
Sector: Primary education; general secondary education
Focus: Remedial teaching; maths and science
Challenge:
Many schools around the world turned to distance learning in the wake of the COVID-19 school closures. However, limited accessibility and low levels of commitment in study hours have resulted in a significant learning gap for most students in primary and lower secondary education. For Cambodia, we estimate a lost learning time of 2 to 5 months per student, despite efforts of distance learning.
Cambodia’s Ministry of Education Youth and Sport (MoEYS) nevertheless decided to let students progress to their next level at the start of the new school year in January 2021. To strengthen these students’ learning progression, remedial and accelerated programmes are needed. With a clear structure of assessment, result analysis and follow-up support in the form of needs-based remedial workshops, students will be able to close the learning gap resulting from the COVID-19 school closures.
Goal:
Teachers are strengthened in establishing a remedial teaching process for mathematics (primary education) and science and mathematics (general secondary education).
Partners:
Approach:
KAPE has contracted VVOB to lead on the ‘remedial education’ aspect of the broader UNICEF-funded project. With ‘Remedial Adaptive Learning for Maths (grade 1 to 9) and Science (grades 7-9)’, VVOB (i) designs an approach to remedial adaptive learning and (ii) develops the necessary tools and structures to implement the approach in primary and general secondary education.
The approach is built on three pillars:
- Identification of five core competencies per grade to focus on during remedial classes organised one day per week, three weeks per month
- Development of assessment tools and structure for teachers to record students’ progress on core competencies
- Organisation of in-depth workshops by MoEYS on a core competency if assessment shows too many learners do not yet fully master it
By the end of the project…
MoEYS and teachers will have at their disposal the following materials for remedial teaching in mathematics (primary education) and science and mathematics (general secondary education):
- General guidelines, with a focus on autonomous decision-making for teachers
- Five core competences for revision and remedial activities from the curriculum per grade: grades 2 to 9 for maths and grades 7-9 for science
- Assessment tools per grade for each of the five core competences
- Flow chart for teaching each core competency, with references to existing materials
- Guidelines for organising workshops
- Registration and progression system linked to the assessment tools
- Supportive video’s with instructions on the different processes and the use of the tools
