By Fatoumatta Gassama & Sariba Manneh
Effective Intervention (EI) in partnership with the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MOBSE) has initiated a project to increase the understanding and develop the learning of children within the Lower River Region and North Bank Region.
Officials told journalists at a press conference recently that Effective Intervention (EI) is a nongovernmental organization founded in 2005. It headquartered is situated in the UK, aimed to increase level of literacy and numeracy of children as well to reduce mortality rates in countries with abject of poverty.
Mr. Babucarr Bouy, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of EI said the organization is gear towards improving the teaching quality and learning of Gambian children. “After School Support Programmed (ASSP) can be considered as the most effective quality improvement initiative that the organization has made,” he further told the press.
He added that the organization aimed to design, implement and measured evidenced base for effective intervention, adding that aid can be more effective for greater result so as to increase the level of literacy and numeracy as well as reduced the mortality rates in countries with lower resources.
Mr. Bouy revealed that the score outcome of children receiving the extra after school lessons in a composite numeracy and literacy test score children in that intervention achieved an average score of 63.1 while children in control group scored 17.5 which implies that about 3.6 time batter performances in favor of children in the intervention group.
Maitri Lenin, national programme coordinator for EI said the organization has identify community educators including young boys and girls from senior schools within the two regions and trained them as community educators to conduct ASSP.
“The intervention also identified teachers from MOBSE to train the community educators how to teach the children,” she noted, adding regular and timely review meeting are conducted for better approach where to introduce to community educators on topics that were not properly taught.
According to her, EI ensure that teaching and learning materials are provided to this community educators and children in the form of work sheets and reading cards, scripted lesson plans also drive from the national curriculum to provide each community educators to deliver their lesson as expected.
Alpha Camara, research manager told the press that the organization is responsible for supporting the children, enhance and measure the outcome of the support, noting the children that receive the intervention support scored average of 63.1 compare to children in the control group that scored 17.5.
“This shows that these children scored times higher on simple and complex addition problems and ten times higher on short story reading comprehension than those in the control group,” he noted.
