How Covid Has Widened the Literacy Gap and What We’re Doing About It

COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on education for students around the world. With school lockdowns, Human Rights Watch has stated that many children in Africa received no education from March 2020 on. In fact, according to the United Nations, “the COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries and all continents.”

Mozambique’s decrees caused a decline in the literacy rate for all children country-wide, including the girls in Kurandza’s program. However, the children we work with are performing a bit better than the national average due to the support they had in place.

Being out of the classroom for most of 2020 and even some of 2021 took a toll on their progress. They lost several months of learning time but despite being unable to attend school in-person, we made the best out of the situation and remain hopeful as we move forward. 

In this post, we’ll go over how COVID has affected the communities we serve in Mozambique and what we’re doing to provide the girls with additional support. 

The digital divide

Many of the families we work with in rural Mozambique don’t have access to electricity or the Internet. As a result, the girls’ studies could not be continued online during the pandemic. Instead, every few weeks, class materials were delivered by hand for them to work on. 

Kurandza was able to pivot quickly. We shifted our focus and began to put funding towards hiring new tutors. We also ramped up home visits to ensure the girls were still learning and getting the education they need. Our team of tutors visited each of them to go over homework and address any questions they had. 

While we did what we could given the circumstances, the lack of instruction and classroom time was a major setback for the girls’ literacy rates and progress in school. Now that they’re back in the classroom and able to do diagnostic tests, we are noticing that their literacy levels are not up to standard.  

The literacy gap

When it comes to education, girls around the globe are disproportionately negatively affected. In Mozambique in particular, only 11% of girls continue to enroll in school past the 7th grade. Additionally, Mozambique’s female literacy rate is less than half of that of males. According to USAID, only 28 percent of females know how to read and write compared to 60 percent of males.

These statistics show us just how large gender disparities can be in school. Girls are often at a great disadvantage, especially at the secondary level, and the pandemic has widened this gap even further. Covid-19 has created a greater need for girls to stay home and support their families by helping parents and siblings, along with taking on household chores. Unfortunately, that often results in them dropping out of school. 

Our on-the-ground team anticipated this happening and took precautionary steps to educate the girls’ families about the importance of education for the long-term through home visits, counseling, and parent-teacher meetings (or “guardian-educator”, a more accurate term) Thankfully, all of the girls in Kurandza’s program remained in school. We are proud to have maintained a 0% dropout rate during such a trying time! 

The path forward

While the pandemic has been a setback to the girls’ learning and progress, Kurandza  recognizes the need for additional support and is taking action to prevent any further learning loss. As we move forward together, our priority is to get all 200 girls back up to speed. 

Cases are going down, the girls are back in school, and the Mozambican communities are slowly starting to gain some normalcy back. The lockdowns were a major disruption to learning and everyday life in Mozambique, but Kurandza is committed to working with local leaders in Mozambique and professional experts in Mozambique to improve literacy rates and help the girls catch up in the classroom. 

The first way we plan to do so is through a new literacy initiative that we’ll be rolling out in June 2021! We’re hiring at least one college-educated Portuguese teacher to teach a literacy crash course with the help of our educators.

Currently, because of COVID and social distancing, the girls are attending school 2-3 days per week. Once the literacy program begins, on the days when they’re not in school, they will come to the Kurandza office for laser-focused lessons from our teachers and educators. They’ll also have regular assessments, homework, and access to teachers every day via phone messaging and calls. The hope is that this individualized approach and instruction will get all of them up to - or surpassing - the national standard for each grade level. 

We are so excited to bring this program to life and help the girls get back on track with their studies. 

To our community - thank you

It’s thanks to you - our sponsors, donors, and Giveback Partners - that we’re able to provide the girls with this additional level of support. We are so grateful for your unwavering commitment to the girls and women of Mozambique. With your help, the future looks bright!

Feeling inspired to help us develop programs like this one? Click here to join the movement!