School Readiness Initiative in Zimbabwe

With regard to Early Childhood Education (ECD), Zimbabwe and its government are very advanced in their political process and has declared ECD compulsory since 2014. Nevertheless, it is still missing the resources and teachers to guarantee effective early learning. The main aim of the school readiness initiative of the Roger Federer Foundation starting in May 2019, is to provide vulnerable children with a good start into primary education due to access to quality ECD A and B. The Roger Federer Foundation will target the most vulnerable communities in Zimbabwe and 1500 P3 primary in 30 rural districts schools whose poverty prevalence rate is 65% and above. A total of 200,000 children, 4000 ECD A and B teachers, 200,000 parents will benefit from the interventions of the program.

For the School Readiness Initiative, the Roger Federer Foundation has developed an Early Learning Kiosk, which is an offline tablet with several tools and apps to capacitate, in a comprehensive manner, teachers in early childhood education. The Early Learning Kiosk was received everywhere with great enthusiasm because of its cost-efficiency and flexible access to know-how and learning, allowing an easy scale to the large number of unqualified teachers. Read more about the Early Learning Kiosk here.

The board has approved a budget of CHF 8,400,000 for the initiative. The program's impact objectives are the following:

• Enhancing the consistent use of a continuous assessment on child development at pre-primary age

• Increase in children participating in organised learning before transitioning into Grade 1

• Increase in children who are developmentally on track at Grade 1 entrance age

• A decrease in repetitions and drop-outs in Grade 1 and 2