GKI Jump-starts East African Education Regional Harmonization

Those who attend university in the United States might cringe when hearing the word "tuition." It conjures up images of large amounts of student loans waiting to be paid back. But in Tanzania, "tuition" has a different connotation, yet one that leaves the listener no less concerned: "When we use it in Swahili, it is something that the student has to pay for that is outside of classes. For some teachers it is a big business. To good maths teachers, it is an even bigger business. During vacation, students travel to look for good maths teachers…for hundreds of kilometers sometimes," explained an interviewed NGO administrator in Tanzania's education sector. The respondent was one of more than 120 teachers, examiners, policymakers, students, and others interviewed to form the basis of a large-scale research and strategy-setting initiative currently undertaken by the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI).

The challenge of extraordinary school fees levied by some teachers is just one of thousands of insights the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI) gained while researching secondary mathematics and science secondary education in the East Africa region. There the pre-tertiary teaching and learning context is complex. Various difficult and interrelated challenges plague the system rendering learning outcomes suboptimal and science literacy limited across much of society. Yet, the region is also characterized by hope, and by a cadre of individuals working tirelessly to overcome these obstacles together.

The Goal: Education Harmonization in East Africa

In 2009, the East African Community (EAC), a regional organization representing the Republics of Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and the United Republic of Tanzania, declared harmonization of secondary education curricula, standards, and evaluation a priority. This objective is tethered to the goal of increasing the competitiveness of the East African Community Common Market through improved labor market mobility. The EAC does not characterize "harmonization" in education as the development of one uniform regional education system, but rather as a move to enhance the consistency and quality of the output of the secondary education system in terms of student knowledge and performance. The subjects of math and science offer a rational starting point for harmonization efforts as they are less culturally sensitive than other subjects like language and history. Physics is physics whether one is in Kenya, Burundi, or Uganda.

Basic proficiency in math and science constitutes the foundational knowledge base on which national science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity is developed. In today's rapidly changing global economy, the critical economic development issue is no longer whether countries should build STI capacity, but what type of capacity to build and how to build it, given each country's constraints and starting point (World Bank STI Capacity Building 2007). Building and supporting STI in developing countries has massive implications for agriculture, infrastructure, and health, among other priorities. Developing countries emphasize the promotion of math and science subjects at secondary level to cultivate skilled labor in all sectors, not merely to produce highly trained scientists and engineers.

Already engaged in promoting STI capacity in East Africa at national level, the World Bank recently signed on to support enhancement of secondary math and science education at regional level. By doing so the World Bank endorses a collaborative approach toward bolstering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education outcomes and outputs on the continent. Through a forthcoming regional strategic dialogue, the Bank will support interchange among the key decision makers across the five EAC countries as they explore opportunities for harmonizing secondary math and science education. On September 21-23, 2011, the event will convene government leaders, policy makers, and technical experts in Arusha, Tanzania, exposing them to a combination of working sessions, country presentations, and structured idea-exchange. GKI was tapped by the World Bank to spearhead the research, analysis, and dialogue design to facilitate cooperation in advance, during, and after the regional dialogue.

As part of the background research effort undertaken by GKI, our research team tackled an ambitious research agenda that spanned five countries and various institutional settings relevant to science and math training. To offer a comprehensive portrayal of the drivers bearing on math and science secondary education, we constructed five interrelated "pillars" for analysis and synthesis: (1) policy and governance, (2) curricular content, (3) teaching and learning resources, (4) teacher training, professional development, and pedagogy, and (5) evaluation of learning outcomes. In just a month and a half, GKI's six-person team interviewed some 120 individuals from government, private sector, academia, the research community, secondary school teachers and students, and other relevant stakeholders. Our goal – extract key trends and insights into a discussion paper and program design that will enable policy makers to identify roadblocks to education harmonization and avoid them by actively participating in knowledge sharing and strategy formation.

This is not the first time GKI has been involved in science education harmonization in the region. GKI Chief Operating Officer Sara E. Farley participated in a conference addressing harmonization of tertiary science and engineering education held by the Rwanda Ministry of Education and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Kigali in December 8-9, 2010. At the conference, leaders from Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo recognized that no one nation can solve their STI challenges alone. Today's STI challenges require aggregation of resources across national and sectoral boundaries. Farley's presentation at the December event emphasized the need for resource sharing and collaboration to solve STI development challenges, which participants enthusiastically promoted. You can read more about this event here.

Secondary Education in East Africa

More than 600 pages of transcripts litter GKI's offices, the results of the team's fruitful inquiry. Reading across the pages, one hears distinct voices: those of teachers, students, examiners, a university professor, the head of a manufacturers' association. Yet distinctions between the insights gleaned in Rwanda versus Burundi versus Kenya blur. More striking than the differences, the similar challenges these systems are poised to tackle emerges: curricula that is too theoretical, teachers ill-equipped to instruct students in more practical approaches, schools bereft of teaching and learning resources, students exiting secondary school without the skills needed for employment, etc. Powerful drivers of change ring out too: a move toward learner-centered teaching, emphasis on inclusion of information and communication technologies, integration of entrepreneurship training. These signals demonstrate that within this opportunity to harmonize science and math curriculum, there exists an even more profound opportunity: to reconceptualize the output of the training system itself. More ambitious than producing children with passing marks on exit exams, science and math education systems can deliver inquisitive and creative minds open to discovery, apt to apply conceptual models to problem solving and inquiry, and hungry for learning over a lifetime.

Stakeholders expressed a sense of hope and optimism at the potential role that regional harmonization might play in enhancing secondary math and science education. For this reason more than anything else, GKI is eager to see what comes of the Ministerial Dialogue in September.

Contributor: Christina Golubski and Sara Farley

Photos: Christina Golubski and Amanda Rose