The Covid-19 pandemic required education systems to adopt new operational approaches and pivot to new opportunities. This had a significant impact on countries such as Kenya, where the pandemic further escalated existing problems of limited internet access and an expensive process of fostering structural change to accommodate home learning facilities. The education management system is poorly governed, there is a lack of trained teachers and limited inclusivity of girls or students with known disabilities.
Our project is a collaboration between Brunel, the Mwezi Foundation, which supports more than 50 schools in Kenya, and Transmedia Communications Ltd, London-based software development and digital skills training company with experience of continuous support to the education sector in Africa.
The deliverable objectives in this project are:
- Identify ways to enhance monitoring of the home-based education system to overcome the problem of limited inclusion of female and disabled students and to reduce the cost associated with the retention of teachers.
- Enhance the quality of the governance system and assist policy makers to make necessary changes in the education governance structure.
- Maintain and analyse required data related to the education system, especially to ensure that home-based learning still meets recognised standards.
- Enhance the capacity of the non-conventional home-based education system by including the diverse needs of female students and students with known disabilities.
- Minimise the cost of delivering education facilities and maximise the benefit of learning by building and supporting a more efficient education management system.
Our field data helps provide research-based evidence to enhance the suitability of Transmedia Communications ClassCare software product a student assessment and grading software tool.
We conducted interviews with principal stakeholders to understand in detail the problems in the education system in Kenya and importantly, to what extent these problems have escalated with the changing COVID-19 environments.
The findings of this research contribute towards the education system governance, create an enhanced data management system, and provide accountability to the initiatives of educational offices in the country. This will in turn increase the retention and reduce the absenteeism of teachers. It considers factors such as the number of female students in the system, the education provision for students with known disabilities, and the factors affecting the success or failure of home-learning. It will also assist policy makers in developing their strategy around the changing nature of the pandemic.
“From this research, the business reached an understanding about the different factors that need to be considered to enhance the ClassCare product to increase adaptability in non-conventional learning systems. Working with Dr Nandy and the Brunel research team has been extremely useful for understanding how to give greater value to the product in the context of better supporting the socioeconomic development of African countries “
Nick Stockbridge, Founder and Director of Transmedia Communications Ltd
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Project last modified 12/10/2023