Hello Friends in EdTech, 

We are pleased to announce that Malawi has been added to our country engagement portfolio. 

Over time, we have built strong relationships with the government of Malawi and with implementing partners seeking to scale up reform activities related to tech-enabled Teacher Continuous Professional Development (TCPD) and Digital Personalised Learning (DPL) which are two of EdTech Hub’s focus areas.

Our work in Malawi includes:

• Partnership with Padziwe, a digital-education start-up, to trial our sandbox approach to generate evidence and test a mobile application for teacher professional development

• Partnership with the Ministry of Education and Cambridge Education to examine if and how teachers engage with the UKAid-funded National Numeracy Programme

• Partnership with onebillion to conduct a sandbox to explore opportunities and barriers to scaling a tablet-based digital personalised learning programme for early-grade literacy and numeracy learners

• Several Helpdesk requests in collaboration with FCDO and World Bank colleagues to support EdTech-related decision-making in Malawi

Now, we are thrilled to add Malawi to our portfolio of focus countries, which will allow us to engage more holistically with dedicated team members and a more explicit focus on supporting government needs related to EdTech decision-making.

Initially, EdTech Hub is supporting the design of a tech-supported approach to teacher training to help the numeracy program reach its full potential. EdTech Hub’s experience and work in TCPD in both Tanzania and Sierra Leone, as well as learnings from the sandbox delivered with onebillion, positions EdTech Hub to support the government’s evidence-driven decision-making. EdTech Hub is excited to engage with decision-makers in Malawi by applying its integrated approach and using design-based research to test and iterate a scalable teacher training model. We will also provide Technical Assistance to support the creation of TCPD content, advising on the model design, and ensuring pedagogical rigour by weaving in evidence from EdTech Hub’s extensive research and expertise in the area of TCPD. 

From the initial success of the larger numeracy programme, we believe this will result in changes in numeracy outcomes for learners by ensuring their teachers are trained effectively, and in ways that reflect evidence-based best practices and effective pedagogy. Together with many partners within and alongside the government, we believe we can make an impact on students’ access to rigorous learning materials that reflect the science of learning, supporting government counterparts by offering new methods for testing and iterating their interventions. Over the course of this collaboration, our goal is to strengthen the TCPD component of the numeracy program in the first year, leading to the government’s planned scale-up to roughly 6,000 schools by 2025. 

As always, EdTech Hub will also ensure that lessons from this work are shared as global public goods, contributing to the ongoing conversation about the effectiveness of technology use in supporting teachers and teaching.

This new commitment to supporting evidence-based decision-making in Malawi is made possible through our ongoing partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will be fully integrated into the Hub’s global portfolio of evidence-building supported by UKaid, World Bank, and UNICEF. Please find more about our work in Malawi here.