Education

Increase access to quality, inclusive education

Many children in Zambia lack access to quality education. Only one in three children complete early childhood education, and 65% of children in grade 2-3 are unable to read or write. As well, national budget allocations to education are too low, with early childhood education making up only 0.1% of the education sector budget.  We aim to increase access to quality, inclusive education with a focus on early childhood and lower basic education.

Our education work will:

• Support government, communities, girls and boys to increase demand for quality, inclusive early childhood care and development education and lower basic education.
• Support government and communities to improve children's literacy and numeracy skills, as well as the learning environment for girls and boys.
• Support government and communities to increase girls' access to early childhood care and development education and lower basic education.
• Improve community engagement in early childhood care and development education and lower basic education.
• Ensure refugee children have access to quality, inclusive early childhood care and development education and lower basic education, even in emergencies.

Our Focus

We focus on the most marginalised and deprived children in rural parts of Western, Muchinga, North Western, Copperbelt and Luapula provinces. We work with children that are living with a disability, children living with HIV/AIDS, orphans, girls, migrant and refugee children, children who belong to minority groups because of their race, language or religion, children involved in the labour market or domestic work, children living in rural and remote communities, as well as children who belong to disadvantaged families.

Our Approach

Be the voice:

• Advocate the government for inclusive early childhood care and development education, ensuring marginalised children receive a quality education.
• Advocate for increased budget allocation to early childhood care and development education and support communities to monitor district government budgets.
• Advocate for inclusive, gender-sensitive education in all early childhood care and development education and basic education schools.

Innovation:

• Contribute to an effective transition from inclusive early childhood care and development education to basic education by improving learning outcomes through a 'Ready to Learn' approach.
• Train teachers and care givers in inclusive teaching methodologies and production of teaching/learning materials with local resources. This will be complemented by technical support supervision to teachers and care givers.
• Integrate early childhood development for children aged three and under, which supports early stimulation, health, nutrition and protection of young children, into the early childhood care and development education centres.

Achieve results at scale:

• Generate demand for inclusive early childhood development education through community engagement and sensitisations on the importance of early childhood care and development education. This will increase enrolments and attendance rates.
• Use social and behavioural change communications and materials in the communities.
• Support children's continued learning at home.

Build partnerships:

• Work with children and our partners such as schools, communities, civil society organisations, government ministries, cooperating partners (UNICEF, UNHCR) to guarantee the optimisation of skills and resources and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Continue partnering with government to ensure that the early childhood education policy is finalised and fully operationalised.

Thematic Leadership

Save the Children has collaborated with the Ministry of General Education to scale up our evidence-based approaches, and pioneer high impact and low cost interventions in Zambia, such as: 

• Emergent Literacy and Math which has three core components: learning at the centres, learning at home and the International Development and Early Learning Assessment.
• Building Brains which has three core components: play, early communication and responsive care.

These approaches have been delivered at national level where we have supported the Ministry of General Education in the development of the early childhood care and development education curriculum, policy, supplementary materials and rolling out of the standard guidelines and monitoring tools. Our support has also extended to civil society organisations in raising awareness on the importance of early childhood care and development education and the need to generate demand by the communities.