Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

0120CHAPTER 3Education for All Global Monitoring ReportEvidence fromsome countriessuggestsmultigradeteaching canenhance accesswithoutcompromisingqualityreconstruction and concerted efforts to get childreninto school are vital. Rwanda’s government backeda school rehabilitation programme with a strenuousre-enrolment campaign aimed at overcomingparental security fears and rebuilding trust.Although it took four years for enrolment to returnto the levels recorded before the 1994 genocide,by 2005 access was above the level that a simpleextrapolation of the trend from 1985 to 1992would have predicted (Obura and Bird, 2009).Adapting schools to local contextsUnderstanding local context is critical to developingpolicies for inclusive education. Many marginalizedchildren live in scattered communities in remoteareas where low population density can significantlyraise the average cost of providing schools andteachers. Household poverty and livelihood systemscan also keep children out of school when familiesrely on children to tend cattle or help with farmwork and domestic chores. Other marginalizedchildren live in slums that are not legallyrecognized and may face problems linked tohousehold vulnerability. Making schools accessiblerequires innovative policy responses gearedtowards specific circumstances.In many countries, low-population density ruralareas are marked by highly concentrated patternsof marginalization in education. Individual villagesor groups of villages in regions such as the Andeanhighlands of Peru and Bolivia may have far fewer,and more widely dispersed, primary school agechildren than other areas. These children arelikely to face longer journeys, with harsh terraincompounding the problem of distance. Attendinga school in a ‘neighbouring’ village might involvefording streams and negotiating steep slopes.During the monsoon season in Bangladesh,children living on chars (sand islands in rivers)may have to swim or use banana-leaf rafts toget to school.Several countries have developed ‘satellite school’models aimed at addressing such problems.Schools are organized into clusters, usuallyconsisting of a central, relatively well-resourcedschool and several smaller satellites. The lattermay be one-room schools with one personteaching more than one grade in the same class.In Bolivia, clusters of schools, known as núcleos,have been created to expand the reach of theeducation system into underserved highland andjungle areas. Each cluster comprises a centralschool, offering the full cycle of grades up tosecondary school, and several satellite schoolsoffering the first three primary grades in multigradeclasses. Students and teachers can be redirectedto different schools within the cluster to makecoverage more even. This system has played a vitalrole in expanding access to education amongindigenous children in highland areas. By providinginstruction in Bolivia’s three main indigenouslanguages, as well as Spanish, núcleos alsopromote bilingual and intercultural education(Giordano, 2008). The reform helped increase thepublic education system’s coverage. For instance,in 1992, 82% of urban but only 41% of ruralstudents completed grade 6; by 2001 it was 85%in urban areas and 74% in rural areas (Contrerasand Talavera Simoni, 2003).Satellite systems have to address difficult problemsin managing progression through grades. Thenúcleo system in Bolivia aims to ensure thatchildren complete their basic education at theconsolidador, or central school. Another approachis to create satellite schools that provide a fullprimary cycle, such as those developed for remoterural communities in Burkina Faso (Theunynck,2009). The advantage of such a system is that itallows for continuity. But does the provision ofmultigrade teaching across more grades potentiallycompromise the quality of provision?That question is an important one. About one-thirdof all primary school age children in developingcountries are now taught in multigrade settings(Little, 2006b). Evidence from some countriessuggests multigrade teaching can enhance accesswithout compromising quality. Reviews of thewell-established Escuela Nueva, a multigradesystem in Colombia, have found higher achievementin Spanish and mathematics than in other primaryschools, controlling for other characteristics(Forero-Pineda et al., 2006). Evidence from BurkinaFaso, Pakistan and Togo similarly suggests thatmultigrade classes can perform at least as well assingle-grade schools (Little, 2006b). Still, not allmultigrade schools are successful and muchdepends upon the effectiveness of institutionalsupport mechanisms (Little, 2006a).The Escuela Nueva system and, to a lesser extent,comparable programmes in Chile and Guatemalahave been successful partly because they are linkedto wider reforms. Research has highlighted theimportance of investment in adequately trainedteachers to work in a multigrade setting, the192