Female education has been an ongoing challenge for the East African country of Malawi. With 50.7% of the population living below the poverty line, the nation is one of the poorest in the world, and a large percentage of the poor are women. A significant reason why is that girls often fall behind early in their education especially in areas like math and reading and end up dropping out. Also, the average elementary classroom in Malawi has 76 students meaning faculty are frequently overburdened and unable to address the delicate situation many young women find themselves in.  The London based nonprofit organization Onebillion has developed the Onecourse technology that is closing the education gender gap in Malawi.

A Girl’s Challenge

While both boys and girls face high dropout rates in Malawian schools, girls are less likely to return due to factors such as labor demands at home, being discriminated against as the perceived weaker gender, absence of female role models and harassment by male teachers and fellow students. With typical teaching practices concerning math and reading in Malawi early grade schools, boys usually pull ahead of girls in math by second grade while girls pull ahead of boys in reading, but this advantage in reading disappears by sixth grade and girls are behind in both subjects.

The Onecourse Experiment

Onecourse is unique in its approach in that it is an all-digital platform where students are guided by a virtual teacher through a strategically crafted set of activities. Students are given a Onetab tablet loaded with Onecourse apps in their native language. For Malawian students this was Chichewa. One of the biggest challenges for developer Onebillion is to prove in trials that significant learning can happen in the absence of a teacher. “For the Onebillion trial, children were taken out of their huge classes, put in groups of 25 and given tablets loaded with math software; similar-sized groups were given tablets without the math software, to control for the possibility that children might benefit from any instruction given in smaller groups.”

Promising Results

Onebillion’s software has helped Malawian girls make significant advances. Evaluations by the University of Nottingham and the University of Malawi demonstrate that digital intervention can not only educate students but prevent girls from falling behind in their learning. Specifically, eighteen 30 minutes sessions with Onecourse early grade math apps prevent girls from falling behind early in mathematics. Early mathematics intervention may also promote girls more likely going to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics courses in the future.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Onecourse technology is closing the gender gap in Malawian early education. Digital learning platforms like Onebillion’s Onecourse have helped aid undertrained and over burned faculty in many developing countries like Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania and is also being used to help marginalized children in the United States. The Onebillion organization, in a tie with the Kitkit school (a similar digital program developer), was awarded the Global Learning Xprize that promotes organizations that create programs allowing children to educate themselves in reading, writing, and math. This program, and others like it, will be essential in ending the educational gender gap in Malawi.

– Joseph Maria
Photo: Flickr