Empower Mozambican girls to go to high school

Greetings from Mozambique, where we have wrapped up another successful school year!

Over the last few months, our team was particularly focused on tailoring education support to students. With the end-of-year exams particularly important for the large number of 10th graders in our cohort, the team focused on exercises that would complement the students’ exams. In addition, the team continued to implement the English language and digital skills training in the adolescent clubs at Manjangue Secondary School, Chokwe District as well as secondary school students from Bombôfo Village. These are skills that are especially important as adolescents start planning their futures and developing the skills necessary to enter the modern workforce.

English language progress

Our English language mentors have continued facilitating activities for the students in the bi-weekly meetings. The students get to practice vocabulary, sentence structures, and practice listening through the Hello English app. Our English language mentors have also facilitated dedicated sessions with the students to practice key conversational topics like family, community and habits. The team also continued to pull from content from the English exam papers from previous years to help target the students’ learning. In this way, our English language program is complementary to their secondary school studies and we hope this will promote better exam results at the end of the year.

Based on the full year of English language tutoring the students have had through our program, we also conducted our own end-of-year assessment to gauge students’ progress so we can determine what to improve upon next year. As can be seen in the chart below, while 44% of the students demonstrated “good” or “excellent” capabilities, there was still a lot progress to be made for just over half of the students. Interestingly, we did not find strong correlations with age or grade, but rather previous exposure, such as having a relative who had spent time in South Africa. For this reason, providing continuity next year to provide ongoing exposure through our weekly club meetings and mentorship sessions will be important for more students to achieve better English proficiency.

Digital skills progress

This quarter, the students have continue to learn the functionalities of the tablet, with particular focus on how to use the tablets to search for information online and how to compose in Google Docs. The tablets are a major draw for the students, who enjoy learning the different apps and playing learning games on the English language app as well. These sessions are always moderated by our mentors, who guide the students in pre-determined activities, and provide support to help students with questions.

Looking forward

This year, our team has tested the integration of English language and digital skills training for secondary school students in Chokwe District, layering on top of our existing adolescent mentorship program. We have tested different things, learning what resonates with the students, understanding what proficiency they already have, and adapting our content. For next year, we look forward to building on this progress with the current cohort of students, while also welcoming in new students to the program. To manage this, our mentors will develop a curriculum that suits the ongoing development of second-year students, while also developing a separate approach for the new students based on the most effective strategies this year. We look forward to expanding and deepening our impact!