After 12 weeks of consultation, the country teams from Schools2030 – the Aga Khan Foundation’s 10-year longitudinal research and learning improvement programme working with 1,000 schools across 10 countries to document “what works” to improve holistic quality learning for all – assembled once more in their home offices to pitch their ideas in response to the question: How might we support children’s learning during COVID-19?

In April 2020, when most of the world was engaged in lockdown, the three-month Human-Centred Design (HCD) course that had been planned for education trainers was forced to change course and respond to the challenges of the pandemic. Determined to lessen the impact of COVID-19 on students, families and teachers, the 10 teams were pulled into the task at hand (read this earlier article about the start of the course).

One of the projects that was commended by all was that of Team India who developed what they dubbed “The Big Box of Bold Ideas”. Through consultations with their communities, the team discovered that one of the problems experienced by parents ­– many of whom are illiterate – was the pressure to support their child to learn at home during lockdown. Whilst many digital resources were being developed to accommodate this, these left behind the most under-privileged children of all – those without access to TV, Internet or mobile phones.

In order to ensure “that the digital divide did not become a learning divide”, The Big Box of Bold Ideas was designed as a low-cost, learning-at-home kit, complete with word cards, puzzles, crafts and activities to complement the curriculum, and to be sent to families once a month. The groups have engaged local women’s social enterprises to make the kits, thus also supporting income-generating activities in the programme areas.

After trialling the boxes with the early years’ cohort over a period of three months, the team intends to review, collect feedback and see what improvements or otherwise need to be made before rolling out similar boxes to other grades. With funding from Schools2030, the prototype kits for the first grades are currently being created.

Team Pakistan also focused their work on supporting parents to engage with their child’s educational needs outside of the classroom, in this case by creating The Easy Guide for Mother-Teachers. Designed to support mothers with varying levels of literacy, the guide is to comprise all sorts of resources, from lesson plans, fun activities, daily routine suggestions, video guides and more. The team also suggested that a mentoring system served by local teachers would be established to ensure that parents could use these resources to their fullest, as well as share any concerns they had with education professionals.

With so many innovations brewing by the time it closed, the course was regarded by the participants as a great success in presenting a range of locally driven interventions. But there was another outcome that will become increasingly valuable over the 10-year lifetime of Schools2030. Given that most of those taking part will not be the end-users, the course has also been crafted to give the country teams the means to pass on the knowledge of how to design programmes holistically to educators within these communities.