Building Learning Foundations (BLF) in Rwanda, funded by UK Aid and worth £25 million, aims to improve the quality of teaching and leadership in all of Rwanda’s government primary schools.
Led by the Education Development Trust, the British Council will implement a key part of the programme alongside a consortium of three UK partners, which also includes VSO.
BLF will focus on providing technical assistance in three areas: systems strengthening, school leadership, and teacher development for foundational skills in English and Mathematics in primary grades 1 to 3.
The British Council is leading the English foundation component of the programme. This will aim to improve the inclusive teaching and learning of English foundational skills so that pupils, including those with special educational needs, make progress in English by grade 3.
By increasing English competency levels, more pupils will be supported in their transition to English medium education in grade 4 as per government policy and are therefore further enabled to complete primary education, ultimately progressing to secondary level.
Using a blended learning approach, teachers will be provided with orientation and guided self-study resources to support their learning both individually and as part of peer support groups.
This approach was successfully piloted under UK Aid’s Innovation for Education Fund (2012-2015) and won a Commonwealth Good Practice in Education Award for teacher development in 2015. A similar approach is also being used to improve the teaching of foundational Mathematics (led by EDT).
The teacher development component of the programme will reach 12,500 teachers and will ultimately benefit around 2.5 million pupils across primary schools in Rwanda.
BLF runs from June 2017 to March 2021. To find out more information, you can follow the project on Twitter @BLF_Rwanda