Malawian Curriculum Online

Problem: 

Children in remote areas have little or no access to education. Many secondary schools are fee paying and all charge for exam entry.  Only 15% of children make it to secondary school in the first place due to the cost and due to the limited number of places available.

Solution: 

We will make the secondary school curriculum for Math, English and Science available online and free of charge to anyone.  Lessons will be in video format with subtitles in the local language Chichewa.  Worksheets, quizzes, worked examples and explanatory notes will be provided.  We will set up an online forum to further enhance the educational provision, facilitating timely answers to questions that will of course arise.

Changing lives globally: 

Every country can provide Science Technology, English, Math secondary courses online free of charge.  Every global child then would have the opportunity to make a proper start to their lives.

In Malawi, only 35% of Malawi children complete primary school and out of the 4.6 million children that attend school, only 368,000 complete secondary school  https://borgenproject.org/10-f... 

More than half of Malawi's population lives below the poverty line. Many children enrol but then drop out of school due to enforced employment, due to responsibilities at home and illnesses in their extended families. Other reasons include; lack of proper transportation links to the secondary facilities and an inability to meet the school's standards in terms of school uniform and purchasing basic learning resources (pens, pencils etc.)

Malawi also faces one of the world’s worst teacher shortages, with the teacher to student ratio of 1:130 in some of the worst affect primary schools.
This fact is mostly due to the expense associated with hiring new teachers. 
The overcrowding of classrooms is found to be another catalyst of high drop-out rates in Malawian schools. Students do not receiving anything like one-on-one attention, they lack resources to learn, many lose hope in the educational system and drop out.

Hence our solution of producing online content for the secondary school curriculum (with local language support) thus enabling anyone across the country with a mobile phone to study.

Our solution requires a sound proof online recording studio with equipment for recording , editing and producing professional quality teaching videos which will be located within the Saint John Paul II Leadership and IT Institute (JPII).

jp2liti.org

This builds on JPII’s already well-established reputation as one of the best and most sought after IT colleges in the country.  JPII is already publishing lessons on line and providing live 1:1 English lessons directly to students in Japan and China.

The studio will enable us to start recording and producing lessons to cover the two years of the Malawi School Certificate of Education curriculum (MSCE) in English, Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Using professional video editing software (Apple Final Cut Pro), quality camera (Sony 4K HD Video Recording Camcorder), studio microphone (Neumann U 87 Ai Condenser Microphone) and computer (iMac Pro), we will publish the online content available for free access across Malawi using Teams, Google-classroom, Zoom and Moodle.

Videos will be recorded in English and Chichewa subtitles will be added.  Once online content for these core subjects is completed, further subjects will be added so that students can enter for the full MSCE exam, which requires six subjects, including English.

Our online teaching platform provides students with a video based learning environment with which they can access, at anytime, the Malawian MSCE courses in English, Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Our online courses will focus on secondary school aged children, especially  those that have dropped out of school.

One of the main reasons that prevent many children from completing their secondary school education in  Malawi is poverty.  Schooling comes with a number of costs such as; enrolment fees, tuition fees, exam fees, uniform costs, transportation, food and other educational needs. With our online lessons, students will not have to worry any of these costs including the tuition fees since our online lessons are free of charge to everyone.

Students also tend to drop out of school in order to handle other responsibilities at home. With the online training, students will be able to set their own learning pace. They can access the lessons from anywhere and at anytime of their choosing. This will give them a better balance of work and studies, so there's no need to give anything up - even if they are children caring for other members of their immediate or extended family. 

Students also lose interest in their education as they do not get enough attention from their teachers at school. This is due to shortage of teachers that results into overcrowded classrooms. With the online lessons, students will be able to receive immediate feedback from tests and quizzes - exactly what teachers at schools do not have time to give. This will encourage and motivation them to work hard, to continue and complete their studies.

Most children in Malawi, do not speak good English. English is not Malawi's first language therefore most people do not adopt it in day to day life. This gives the children little motivation to speak English. As such, they struggle with their English lessons and tests. The Malawian Curriculum is published and set using English. From the online videos, we hope that students will improve their English.  The videos will be enhanced with subtitles in Chichewa - which nearly every Malawian speaks fluently - giving students (and parents) with poor command of the English language, east access to the online lessons.

To attract users in the first instance, we will be working with local radio stations across the country to include articles in magazine programmes to help promote our online training in a meaningful manner.  We will also liaise with churches and the Ministry of Education to promote our free service across the whole Country.

On completion of each section of the course (semester length content), students will be awarded a personalised pdf certificate.  To engage students in the short term, every individual lesson will be supported by a quiz, which will enable students to accrue points according to how well they have performed.

It is hoped that these certificates will themselves attract interest and value from employers and students alike - as completing the full MSCE exam is a major undertaking for anyone outside of school.

Our solution targets children who are or were unable to attend secondary school.  Also students already attending secondary school needing to augment their studies due to large classes and/or poor attendance.  In fact anyone wishing to study the Malawian Secondary Curriculum. Besides guided independent work, we also support togetherness, whereby students can meet and work out topics together. Where students need clarification, they should consult parents, other adults and peers.   Chichewa subtitles on the videos will facilitate active participation from adults who might otherwise be unable to assist.

The online forum will enable anyone to submit answers to questions.

'Prototype' aligns with our solution in the sense that our solution is an idea which we have been implementing at JPII.

The team at Saint John Paul II Leadership and IT Institute (JPII) are already generating online content for tertiary courses and delivering English courses 1:1 to Japanese and Chinese students via Zoom calls.  Students login to the JPII system to access the course materials and then submit work online.

JPII is part of the Beehive Centre for Social Enterprise (BCSE) in Chilomoni, which is growing rapidly.  In addition to JPII, we have the Mother Teresa Children's Centre (nursery) along two brand new schools, Saint Kizito Primary and Carlo Acutis High School.

The opening of Carlo Acutis High School provides us with the expertise we now need to extend our program to include the Malawi Secondary Certificate in Education (MSCE) curriculum for Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.  

Malawi has a high illiteracy rate of 72.94%. {countryeconomy.com} These illiteracy rates are due to pupils dropping out of school or not attending school in the first place. This is due to poverty, home responsibilities and lack of interest in school - made worse with very large class sizes. With our online lessons, students will not be needing funds for their education - overcoming the poverty challenge that restricts them from attending school. Since online lessons can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, at one's own learning pace, students will be able to handle home responsibilities and school at the same time. With the overcrowded classrooms in many schools of Malawi, there is no opportunity for 1:1 interaction between a student and a teacher. Large class sizes also result into a limited number of learning resources. This causes the students to lose interest in school and eventually drop out. With the introduction of our online lessons, students will be able to learn at their own pace and get their parents' guidance where necessary. The Chichewa subtitles will help parents and other adults to participate in the educational process.   

Having the MSCE curriculum online is an innovative approach to schooling.  To our knowledge, no other country in the world has its National Curriculum available on line.  Children and adults alike will have completely free access to an education that they would otherwise not be able to afford, not have time to attend or feel unable to join due to their age.

Malawian MSCE Curriculum Online.

Current Number of People being served: (In School only.)

Number of People to be serving in 1 year: 10,000

Number of People to be serving in 5 years: 50,000

According to:

https://borgenproject.org/10-f...

"{There are} around 4.6 million students enrolled in schools throughout Malawi, only eight percent of them complete secondary school. "

This figure of 4.6 million includes primary and secondary schools.

So only 368,000 children complete their secondary education.  This leaves 4.2 million students who do not.  This is our most important target audience: children who, for whatever reason, were unable to attend secondary school.

According to countryeconomy.com, in 2019, 43.47% of the population was below the age of 15.  The population pyramid shows that for children aged between 15 and 19 (typical secondary school age)  there were 1,051,831 males and 1,053,390 females in 2019.  

Thus we have a total secondary age population in excess of 2 million to target, including the mere 328,000 who are attending Secondary School.  Additionally we can provide education for adult populations which in the 20 - 24 age band, numbers 1.8 million.

Our online lessons will only be accessed by pupils who have registered with us. This way, we can measure progress by checking the number of pupils who have enrolled, how many times they log into our systems and how long they stay active in the system. Our system will also contain some tests which pupils will be required to take after each topic, from their scores, we will be able to tell if our lessons are being helpful to them.

Currently, we have a total number of fourteen people who are helping us with working towards our solution. Four of them are full time workers and ten of them are part time workers.

Full Time Workers: 4

Part Time Workers:10

Our workers are all Malawians who have done the MSCE Exam and they know people who have not done MSCE. 

Our full time team consists of Father Nanyallo the principle who has a degree in Business Management, miss Raiken Ng'oma the college registrar who has an advanced Diploma in Business Management, miss Future Namacha who has a Business Management Certificate and Samm Sozela the production manager who is a professional photographer.

Our part time workers include; May Bikoko who has a degree in Business Management, Eunice Kumwenda who has a degree in Business Management, Steven Juvensio, degree in IT, Lughano with a degree in IT, Osborne Banda who has a diploma in ICT, Salvation Makina who has a diploma in ICT, Prince Kennedy who has a diploma in ICT, Tawina Nkate who has a diploma in ICT, Nestar Namacha who has a business management certificate and Chimwemwe Kalumphalunga who has a diploma in ICT.

Our team comprises 50% women and 50% men. We will endeavor to maintain  this balance as the team grows.

Our leadership team comprises of; Father Nanyallo, Mr Steven Juvensio, Ms Future Namacha, Ms May Bikoko, Ms Eunice Kumwenda. 

We will continue to maintain as close as possible a ratio of 50:50 of women to men. 

Our leadership team also comprises of Catholic and Non Catholic members. Which means that there are no religious barriers to our team. 

The Malawian MSCE curriculum online is an idea that we have been trying to implement for the past few years - one that we will continue to pursue, irrespective of the outcome of this competition.

We now have the means to take this project to the next step - to make the Malawian MSCE curriculum freely available online to anyone.  The opening of Carlo Acutis High School along with the experience and expertise of our colleagues at JPII, brings our dream that much closer to reality.

Of course we hope that we can make it into the selected teams, and receive the $10,000.  It will be of great help towards establishing our solution. 

However, we are completely committed to offer free online education to every Malawian. Our demonstration of the success of the project in Malawi will enable other countries to do the same.  There is no financial gain implicit in our solution, so there is no reason for us not to share our findings and solutions to the problems we encounter with the whole world.

Crucially, the nine months of personalized support from Solve staff and Members of the cross-sector social impact community will provide us with invaluable expertise and ideas to break through barriers -  known and unknown.

Notwithstanding the production of the curriculum on line with Chichewa subtitles, delivery of the curriculum through a small phone screen also has it challenges. For example writing an English essay on any mobile handset will be no mean feat.

PR

Support needed to promote our solution nationally and to encourage other countries to adopt similar approaches for their curricula.

Monitoring

At present, we have no monitoring or assessment system for managing users, tracking progress, reporting and marking work automatically.  Such a system will be integral to our solution.  Support needed.

Distribution 

The success of our solution is dependent on a good uptake of users initially.  We have ideas to promote our service through magazine radio programs, using Church channels and using the Ministry of Education to promote in schools.    Support appreciated.

Technology 

The biggest challenge we face for our solution is delivery of the whole MSCE Curriculum through a small screen on a mobile phone.  Whilst we can make our content "mobile friendly" maintaining students interest and captivating their attention will not be easy.  As an input and feedback device, a mobile phone handset is very limited.

Whilst technology is rapidly advancing and voice recognition will facilitate input of textual data, students will inevitably be constricted by the size of the screen and ipso facto, the size of their input device.   Data is expensive in Malawi and access to smart phones is limited but improving. Ease of use of the system with low data requirements will be essential for its success.

Support in delivery and collection of data in the context of online learning that will make the user's experience as intuitive and straight forward as possible will be fundamental to our solutions success.

We are very willing to partner with other organisations.

Our solution is free at point of use and we require it to remain that way.

Otherwise we want to share our solution globally - to be adopted on a country by country basis - each country's curriculum being different.

There are significant hurdles to overcome with adoption and use.

We welcome guidance on which partners would be best positioned to help us.

General Motors is working towards becoming the most inclusive company in the world, and dedicated to making STEM education more accessible and equitable.

Our solution is about creating a more accessible and equitable STEM education through online curriculum.

General Motors promotes the creation of smart, safe, and sustainable communities around the world

Based on our organization's mission and goals, with a reliable funding, we are eligible to start a program which can work towards creating smart, safe and sustainable communities. 

For more information about our organization, visit https://www.beehivemw.org/

Any refugee worldwide who wishes to access the Malawi curriculum online will be able to do so with a modest handset and data. 

We are providing an online free learning curriculum, to give every Malawian an opportunity to access a free education at secondary level from our online curriculum. Our online curriculum will include notes and videos in various topics for the following subjects: English, Math, Biology, Physics and Chemistry at secondary level. To access our online curriculum, children will need to have a mobile handset with data.

We will use the GSR Prize to help us reach all our targeted populations, ensuring that we are meeting every child's needs to access our online curriculum. Pupils will need enough data to access videos and notes from our portal. Therefore, we will also use the GSR Prize to issue mobile handsets and provide data to pupils who are unable to afford it themselves. 

Our organization will not benefit financially from the solution. Pupils will be able to access Ad free content at no cost to themselves. Therefore there are no barriers to our solution being used globally by other parties.