Public schools, including all of Partners’ schools, do not charge tuition and primarily serve children from low-income families. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, these schools, which comprise about 80% of schools in Ethiopia, have neither the connectivity, digital devices, nor technical skills that would allow access to remote education.  Poor families do not have such resources at home, and many parents are unable to provide learning content, being illiterate themselves.  A huge digital divide and learning resource inequality exists between these schools and private schools.   The latter provide broad access to digital education to economically better off families, who not only can afford to send their children there, but who also have access to digital resources at home, allowing remote learning even when schools are closed.   

Each year, millions of children miss classes due to either man-made or natural crises. Over 26 million students in Ethiopia were left without educational experiences for more than 7 months when classes were suspended because of COVID-19.  In Partners’ operational area- the Amhara National Regional State (ANRS)- an estimated 4.1 million children did not attend school, and 4,178 schools were closed for the entire 2023/24 academic year (BoE, March 27, 2024 update). 

The digital divide does not prevent enrollment. But it does contribute to the disparity in teaching and learning by remote means during school closures.  

Not surprisingly, there has been a significant learning loss and a decline in the overall quality of education in recent years, particularly in public schools.  The Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA-2021) revealed that 70% of Ethiopia’s second graders could not read a single word in their mother tongue. Among nearly 900,000 students who took Ethiopia’s grade 12 higher education entrance certificate examination in 2023, only 3.2% scored the minimum passing mark, almost all from private schools.   

Recognizing the significant learning and achievement gaps and their potential impact on students, Partners has initiated a program with technical and financial support from the Internet Society and Compassionate Eye Foundation, and in collaboration with the Bahir Dar University (BDU) and ANRS’ Bureau of Education (BoE) and other partners. The initiative aims to significantly improve educational quality and accessibility for children and youth from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and to close the gaps and inequalities, by leveraging technology. It seeks to: (1) provide unlimited access to high-quality, curriculum-aligned multimedia content at no cost to families throughout the year, (2) offer interactive content and personalized learning opportunities, (3) enhance teaching quality and learning assessment by providing in-service teachers and leaders access to high quality multimedia content, training, and on-going remote coaching support, (4) improve teaching and learning, as well as wellbeing and health outcomes for students by collecting and analyzing academic and non-academic data and using the evidence to inform interventions.  

A team of experts from Partners, BDU and BoE is customizing integrated and mobile-compatible eLearning (ELMS) and student information management systems (SIMS) and collecting and creating multi-media content aligned with the learning targets. The ELMS and SIMS will be piloted in Partners’ 23 schools, each of which will have a digital learning hub/classroom equipped with devices, connectivity and electricity. Partners has already established such hubs in 5 of its intervention schools. The hubs will be used by teachers and students alike to achieve the program goals, encouraging independent learning at students’ own pace and preferred time, and providing access to multimedia and interactive content both in school and on their families’ mobile phones, including on weekends and school breaks. Training will be provided to both teachers and students on how to effectively use the digital devices and platforms and access content.  The ELMS and SIMS will be hosted on a dedicated cloud server. The systems will be piloted for three years, during which time user-experience data will be used to improve the systems. A toolkit will also be developed to assist BoE and other partners in replicating the digital learning systems in other ANRS schools and beyond.    

For Partners’ education specialists themselves, these digital solutions will provide opportunities for travel-free professional development, engaging technical partners from both within and outside Ethiopia. This capability will enable Partners to scale-up the teacher and leader capacity- building support it has built, targeting all educators and leaders in the district. It is planned that these facilities will also be used to provide digital and financial literacy training for out-of-school youth during weekends and school break.