There is more to receiving an education than learning enough to pass tests

First Sparks - Education for Development is a project sponsored by Promethean along with Oxford University Press and Families Worldwide.

Every child deserves the right to an education. Yet in some countries, access to teaching and learning is a privilege to but a few. That’s where First Sparks comes in. Led by Promethean, this grass roots initiative will give less fortunate children access to education from the ground up – starting with Yosefe and Mkasanga – two schools in Zambia.

The First Sparks project has adopted these schools and put funding in place for the next two years that will give them maximum long-term benefit. The schools have very different needs, so an individual funding strategy has been put in place for each of them. Focusing on improving infrastructure and raising standards, First Sparks is about giving something back to education and building self-sustainable learning communities.

Paul Berry from Promethean, reflects on the journey taken and the long journey that still lies ahead:

“On a cold wet February morning the idea that became First Sparks was born.

Promethean were looking for ways to generate interesting resources, content and programs for UK teachers to use on Interactive whiteboards, linked in with the PHSE elements of the curriculum. The initial thought was that we wanted to support a school in the developing world as it adopted IT and classroom technology but decided that was probably of more interest to us than our audience!

From this came the idea of supporting a school from its foundations up. A school in an area where an education was most needed but hard to obtain. This led through a number of contacts and coincidences to Zambia and the Luangwa valley. Zambia is the world’s 133rd poorest nation with all the problems that bedevil sub-Saharan Africa; poverty, HIV infection rates and low life expectancy. Education, and access to it, depends on where you live and is only free up to Year 7. Most children drop out after this as schooling becomes fee-paying from that point. Girls have an even harder time receiving an education.

Initially the hard part for Promethean was how to get the support funds where they would do most good. At this point we were introduced to 2 safari companies; Norman Carr Safaris and Remote Africa Safaris who both operate in the valley and more importantly have been supporting 2 local schools through client donations for several years. This gave us the perfect way to get the funds in the right hands and spent on the things that had most benefit for these schools.

The two schools are themselves at opposite ends of the valley and opposite ends of the standards for Zambian schools. Mkasanga is a small village school with very limited facilities whilst Yosefe has grown to a school educating over 900 students, though still with very little resource.

Both schools were contacted and informed of our plans and a recce trip was planned for October 2007. To maximise the information we obtained on the trip in addition to myself we sent one of Promethean’s Teaching and Learning Advisors, a former primary school teacher, and a UK student recently finished his secondary education (in this case my son Luke). It was important we obtained a cross-section of views on the schools and the attitude of students to their learning if we were to create the material relevant to UK schools. It is a long time since my own 1st hand experiences of education and I was sure there were elements that I would not take on board that a teaching professional and a student would!

Our first visit was to Mkasanga Basic School, a collection of buildings with tin roofs and cracked blackboards and precious little else. A committed group of teachers and teaching assistants and a school population ranging in age for 4 to 18 greeted our party with a mixture of enthusiasm and curiosity.

Mkasanga’s needs are basic – poor building techniques have led to toilet blocks collapsing and 2 of the classrooms developing alarming cracks in their walls. Without money to repair/replace these the school faces even greater difficulty to cope with the number of pupils requiring an education.

Yosefe’s challenges were different. A charming, engaging and driven headteacher has created a school where demand most definitely outstrips supply! Over 900 pupils in a school that has capacity for less than half that number. Teachers working 3 shifts to cope, 70+ in a class and classrooms bulging at the seams. Here our commitment was to build a new classroom block with 3 teaching spaces and 2 storage areas.

What struck me most, particularly about Yosefe, was the respect, manners and discipline of the children and their unquenchable desire to learn. Despite being at a poverty level that was in ways quite distressing, all were in school uniform, and all were engaged in what I, as a layman, would describe as “active learning” – a palpable feeling in each classroom that they were going to extract every minute and ounce of learning from school to improve their life chances. It truly makes you appreciate the great good fortune that being born in the west represents.

One final piece that will remain with all of us on this trip took place in the crowded sanctuary of the headmaster’s office. The office walls were crammed with handwritten posters espousing the school’s philosophy as well as charts tracking the number of pupils; boys and girls by age group.

To one side was a chart that showed a large number in blue ink – 337 – the number of orphans in the school!!!

Over one third of those positive, smiling, engaging and driven learners had no parents to guide or support them. At that point we realised even more the importance of the work that Edwin Chupa and his staff were undertaking….

….there is more to receiving an education than learning enough to pass tests!”

There is much to do and you can be part of it. Visit www.firstsparks.co.uk and see how you can help.

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