Improving the performance of children in primary schools in Africa, paying specific attention to barriers facing girls.
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Learning, Practice, and Mastery of Literacy at primary schools by poor children in rural areas

 
  

Oct/Nov. Edition of questFocus e-newsletter. Click here to read

 

What is QUEST (Quality Education for Social Transformation) 1998-2006

QUEST was a research, intervention and dissemination program supported by The Rockefeller Foundation on the quality of primary education in Africa.

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Expanding access to a quality primary education provides the greatest opportunity to the majority of children in Africa to become informed, articulate, and active citizens. Over the past decade, many African governments have increased public resources for education and implemented policies to expand primary education. Unprecedented numbers of children, especially girls from poor and rural households, have enrolled in school for the first time.

The process of democratic social transformation requires citizens who are able to express their own needs; able to demand the provision of real policy options; and able to make considered decisions and choices around those options.

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QUEST was focused on three (3) main components:

1. Improving the capacity of teachers to help rural children master literacy in English. read more  

2. Improving teacher knowledge on sexual maturation in order to encourage a supportive curricula and environment at school so as to enhance the retention of girls. read more 

3. Disseminating the findings of QUEST sponsored projects, particularly to policy makers. read more

News Briefs!

Policies on Free Primary and Secondary Education in East Africa:

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are among the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa which have recently implemented policies for free primary education, motivated in part by renewed democratic accountability following the re-emergence of multi-party politics in the 1990s. However, it is not the first time that the goal of expanding primary education has been pursued by these three neighbouring countries which have much in common. read more...

Nomadic Schools for Mobile Girls. GARISSA, Kenya, Oct 29 (IPS) - Five years after the introduction of free primary education (FPE) in Kenya, the enrolment of girls in schools continues to lag behind in Garissa, in Kenya's North Eastern region. Most communities living in the North Eastern region are nomadic and semi-nomadic, and depend on livestock for their livelihood. read more...

UNICEF urges action to tackle Zimbabwe’s education ‘crisis’. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called for urgent action to address Zimbabwe’s education system – once the best in Africa – which is suffering due to a combination of low salaries, poor attendance by both teachers and students, and transport and food problems. read more...

Headline News!