Jolly Phonics Copperbelt Provincial Rollout in Zambia

Beyond Ourselves Zambia (BOZ) have partnered with Jolly Futures and the Ministry of Education (MoE) to support the advancement of English Literacy across Zambia by providing Jolly Phonics teacher training. Together, we have scored huge successes in helping pupils to transition from literacy in Zambian languages to that of English. In Zambia, Jolly Phonics has been rolled out across the Copperbelt Province in all 515 government and community schools in Grade 3, the point at which pupils are expected to start to read and write in English as guided by the Zambian National Curriculum. With the approval of Jolly Learning and support from Jolly Futures, BOZ has developed the Jolly Phonics Teaching Aid (JPTA), a contextualised resource for the teaching of Jolly Phonics in Zambia, which was approved for use as a supplement throughout the country by the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) in 2021.

Jolly Phonics was first piloted in 2018 in Ndola and Lusaka districts. After proving to help learners achieve rapid improvements, it was expanded to all districts in the Copperbelt Province in 2020. Children in pilot classes achieved significantly higher scores in their reading and writing when compared to children in control classes. The pilot teachers found Jolly Phonics methodology and lessons fun, easy to use and highly effective in developing reading and writing for children with a variety of learning abilities. Unanimously, teachers that used Jolly Phonics were enthusiastic about continuing to utilise the tool to teach literacy in English.

Since 2018, BOZ, with the generous support of Jolly Learning and Jolly Futures, has been training and mentoring teachers, school leaders and education officers in Jolly Phonics. In 2022 and 2023 the Copperbelt Provincial Education Office (PEO) has supported provincial rollouts of Jolly Phonics by providing training venues in all the 10 districts of the province, teacher transport and feeding for all attendees. This has enabled even teachers working in remotely located schools to attend training.

Over the last 6 years, over 3,500 teachers have been trained in Jolly Phonics, which has enabled them to go on to develop the literacy of over 150,000 pupils using this revolutionary teaching methodology. During this time, BOZ has tracked improvement in the reading performance of these pupils. Consistently, pupils using Jolly Phonics have scored two or three times higher than pupils in non-Jolly Phonics classes!

So far, 2023 has been an exciting year for BOZ in its quest to improve literacy Levels throughout Zambia.  They have built on the successes of previous years to train over 1,300 Grade 3 teachers in Jolly Phonics. In addition to this, they offered training to all Deputy Headteachers and Senior Teachers in charge of Grade 3. These trainings were accompanied with free materials to enable participants to implement it effectively. Training was conducted in 3 phases: Phase 1 in November 2022 saw the Grade 3 teachers trained in Jolly Phonics Pupil Book 1, Phase 2 in February 2023 saw all school leaders receive training in Jolly Phonics and in mentoring and monitoring teachers. While Phase 3, in May 2023, saw training in Pupil Book 2. A total of 1,475 individuals were trained, and their end of training feedback suggested that they felt confident and motivated to teach their pupils using this fun and multi-sensory approach.

The trainings were commissioned by the Copperbelt Provincial Education Officer (PEO) Dr Stephen Chishiko during a meeting with BOZ in August 2022. The PEO expressed the desire of the MoE for all primary school teachers to receive training so that all Zambian learners who were struggling to read and write in primary schools could benefit from the programme and ‘catch up’ with their peers. He praised the successes already achieved by Jolly Phonics in improving literacy levels in the province, which contributed to the Copperbelt Province performing better academically than other provinces.

In May of this year, each district in the Copperbelt Province received Jolly Phonics resources for all 515 primary schools. These included JPTAs and Jolly Phonics Teacher’s Books for 2,431 teachers, and Jolly Phonics Pupils Book 1 and 2 for 65,500 Grade 3 pupils. There was an air of excitement as the distribution of resources commenced, with teachers overjoyed at no longer having to spend precious teaching time copying out long sections of work on the board, but instead be able to devote the time to delivering quality Jolly Phonics lessons because each pupil had their own book to use.

A major highlight of the Jolly Phonics journey in Zambia has been the development of a local team of competent and highly motivated Jolly Futures trainers. From no Zambian accredited trainers at the start of 2018, there are now 13 trainers able to deliver both Pupil Book 1 and Pupil Book 2 Training. This has enabled BOZ to grow its capacity to deliver training in-country on a much larger scale.

Together with the MoE, BOZ has continued to track pupils’ improvement levels as they use Jolly Phonics, comparing results with those pupils not using Jolly Phonics schools in other provinces in Zambia. In June, a comparison was done using baseline data collected in at the beginning of the school year and data collected at the beginning of Term 2. As found in previous years, learners using Jolly Phonics have continued to make 2-3 times more progress than learners not using Jolly Phonics which has elated key stakeholders. To ensure that teachers continue to receive support, BOZ is developing resources for teacher group meetings for teachers to continue to share good practice in using the programme, which will be coordinated through in-service training coordinators across the province.

Beyond Ourselves are grateful for the support of various stakeholders in ensuring the success of Jolly Phonics in Zambia. They thank Jolly Learning Ltd and Jolly Futures for the generous donations of the Jolly Phonics Teacher’s Book and Jolly Phonics Pupil books, as well as other resources needed for training and implementation. They are extremely grateful to the Ministry of Education – Copperbelt Provincial Education Office for their support with logistics for the teachers, as well as the dedicated and passionate team of Jolly Futures and Jolly Phonics Professional Trainers.