A recent study on the method used by NewGlobe in its Bridge Kenya schools reveals that academic performance can be greatly improved if a structured methodology is used to deliver lessons. Omowale David-Ashiru, Group Managing Director, NewGlobe tells CNBC Africa that achieving improvement at scale is possible through creative partnerships.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!There is a report done by a renowned Nobel Winning Professor of Economics, Michael Kremer which suggests that NewGlobe uses a methodology that delivers superior learning outcomes in Bridge Schools in Kenya
What strikes me the most is really the headline of the report. This study has confirmed that the gains that we have using the NewGlobe methodology is amongst the largest ever recorded in a study like this. To explain it in a way that everyone can relate to, basically for every two years, primary students in a NewGlobe supported school like the Bridge Kenya schools in this study gain an additional year of learning over children in other schools taught using traditional methods and for younger children, 3-5 years that is early childhood, it is even better than that. In their case, for every two years in a NewGlobe-supported school, they gain an extra year and half of learning compared to learning in other schools that use traditional methods. So that is really the headline of this report.
Can you briefly explain what is different about this method and how can we scale this across the continent?
What is different about the NewGlobe methodology, which we pioneered in Kenya is that it is holistic. It is founded on two things – data and expertise. But unlike many other learning interventions which just look at specific areas in educational experience, ours looks at the whole thing, so we are using data for training and coaching of all the teachers. We use a digital learning platform that provides real-time data analysis of what is being learnt and the results of that. We use teaching guides that are grounded in a scientifically-based pedagogy. So, what is the best way that a teacher can present the curriculum and what is the fastest and best way that a learner or a student can learn?
There is an entire 360 support system. So basically, the real thing is the data that we get, just getting all that data and continuing to iterate on that, using that for accountability, monitoring and dealing with content as seen.
That sounds interesting but then the way you describe it, clearly it is an ecosystem we are dealing with here. Again, to my earlier question about how potentially we can scale this, can you speak to that? Because hopefully, we want to take this across the continent
Exactly. We are excited about this because recently and you may have seen this, there have been a lot of reports done by big organizations like the World Bank, UNESCO on what we are calling the global learning crisis. It is like the worst in a hundred years. The World Bank calls it “Learning Poverty” and maybe I should explain what that means.
It is basically telling us that 90% of children, 10-year-old children at 9 out of 10 in sub-Saharan Africa cannot read or understand a simple text. Now, this is not just a few children, this is in millions. Children are in school but not learning. So why we are excited about this is because this kind of learning gains if scaled across the continent can resolve the learning poverty that we are talking about.
Now is it being scaled, and can we scale it? We can scale it and we already are scaling it. When this study was done in Kenya, we were supporting about a hundred thousand children. Today, that number is almost a million. We are doing this in Liberia, Rwanda, three states in Nigeria and one in India and obviously more and more. It is scalable, and we are already scaling it and we are seeing the same results, similar results.
Right. Maybe you can talk very briefly about NewGlobe, the organization itself and what your objectives are
Okay. I’ll just start by stating our mission. Our mission is to provide life-changing education to millions of children which is why we are very particular about scale. We were founded in 2007 and what we do is support national and sub-national state governments by creating powerful technology-enabled education systems. So that is really it, transforming educational systems in the public space, national and state governments – we partner with them.
I’m curious as well. It does sound like your focus initially was Kenya. I’m trying to understand what drove that decision. Is there something about the country that was more welcoming? I just want to get a sense of why
Actually, that is an interesting question. We started in Kenya with our own schools, you know building our own schools. You have to start somewhere. This problem was all over and we just kind of looked for where can we start this. Now Kenya itself also has a strong education system but it was chosen as a place to start. When we started seeing the results there, we started scaling across everywhere, but we are interested in everywhere there is learning poverty, every low-income, middle-income company, this is something we believe can bring in results and reverse the learning poverty and give us some learning gains.
Can you just highlight the type of partnerships that enables this to thrive in a country like Kenya as you just described? Obviously, Nigeria has, if you can also describe it as such, a learning poverty issue, it would be great to see how we can see some of these programmes implemented here
Basically, we want to work with any nation, or state government that wants to resolve this and we really believe everyone should. Education is linked to economy. Your economic growth is linked to how educated your folks are and there are studies that show the results. So, this is something that we believe should be a front-burner for every state and national government. What these results do for us is to show everyone that there is something that works so if we are interested in changing education, changing the lives of children, providing a future for our countries economically then really everyone should want to do this, to bring in a methodology like this, a standardized methodology of learning that can transform the education space.