Community-led learning to reach 360,000 children across Uganda

On 27th January 2022, the UK aid funded SESIL programme scaled up its Community Led Learning initiative to reach up to 360,000 children across Uganda.

SESIL identified that many early-grade children were underperforming in basic literacy and numeracy before the COVID-19 pandemic. With almost two years of instructional time lost, these pre-existing learning gaps have worsened.

The effects of lockdown and school closures has left learners in lower classes more vulnerable, especially those from low-income families who could not access digital learning resources.

Alicia Herbert signing the handbook

In early 2021, the Community-Led Learning pilot targeted more than 12,000 children from primary years 1-3 to address these learning gaps by involving community members in teaching basic literacy and numeracy skills. The end-of-pilot evaluation demonstrated that significant learning gains were achieved. The scaled-up model builds on this successful pilot. It aims to reach a total of 360,000 children with the greatest learning needs in literacy and numeracy.

Small groups of lower primary school learners will meet four times a week for two hours – one hour on numeracy and one hour on literacy. Classes are run by community volunteers who use pre-prepared, highly structured lesson materials developed by SESIL. Community-Led Learning offers an innovative, low-cost and longer-term approach for communities and local governments to help bridge children’s learning gaps following almost two years of school closures.

With strong endorsement from the Minister for Education and Sports (MoES), Community-Led Learning has been integrated into the MoES School Reopening Strategy, as a remedial learning approach to operate alongside the formal school timetable and allow children to catch for time lost during school closure and build the children’s foundational literacy and numeracy skills.

Highlighting the value of foundational learning, Alicia Herbert OBE, Director of the Education, Gender and Equality Directorate at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said:

“Foundational skills are the building blocks needed to make any progress in school, attain higher order skills, and reap the full rewards of education. Therefore, they must be prioritised first. Everything else will follow. Prioritising foundational learning for all, is the smart as well as the right thing to do.”

With the aim of engaging the most marginalised children, SESIL will ensure that at least half of learners reached through Community-Led Learning are girls, in line with the UK government’s pledge to ‘leave no one behind’.

The Ministry calls on parents, guardians and community members to support Community-Led Learning to help improve early grade learning outcomes and give every child the opportunity to succeed.

Strengthening Education Systems for Improved Learning (SESIL) is a five-year programme under Uganda's Ministry of Education and Sports, aimed at improving the equity and quality of measurable learning outcomes for girls and boys in Uganda at the lower primary school level. SESIL is funded by UK aid and implemented by Cambridge Education.