A non-profit organisation in South Africa, Outliers, has distributed more than 20,000 educational resources tailored towards primary and high school learners.
The aim of outliers, a network of 200 after-school tutoring programmes that supports thousands of learners from under-resourced communities, is to help learners perform better at school and to ultimately help them gain entry into university.
The after-school programmes provide learners with much-needed academic support and create safe spaces where children can continue to learn.
Learners have access to workbooks, tutors, reading material and stationery. During school holidays many of the tutoring programmes run a range of holiday clubs to keep children occupied and safe during the day.
‘Facilitators had similar concerns for their learners – the safety and well-being of children was the biggest one’, University of Cape Town quoted Head of Outliers, Dr Heidi Segal, as saying.
Additionally, she said that facilitators were also concerned that the school drop-out rate would increase dramatically once schools eventually resumed.
It is understood that around 40,000 children drop out of school in South Africa every year.
To ensure that learners remained focused on and engaged with their schoolwork while schools and after-school programmes were closed, Segal and her team set the wheels in motion to produce educational packs that learners could work through while at home.
The workbooks were collated in line with the Department of Basic Education’s condensed curriculum and consist of various materials, including grade-specific mathematics exercises and literacy exercises focused on comprehension and reading for meaning.
Stationery is also included in the packs to ensure that learners can complete the activities.
Segal said, ‘Some organisations we partnered with used bicycles to enable door-to-door visits, while others used street committees and walked to deliver the edu-packs in their neighbourhoods’.
‘Outliers then partnered with community action networks and other community-based organisations to ensure that the learning material reached learners across the province.
‘We were on a mission and explored every means available to us. We enlisted the services of organisations and individuals who had access to transportation and who, during the hard lockdown, received an essential service permit’.
It was gathered that more than 20,000 packs have been distributed.
Source: University of Cape Town
Photo source: University of Cape Town
