Multigrade schools: improving access in rural Africa?

This booklet addresses a problem that is crucial to the implementation of Education for All: how to provide for growth in school enrolments whilst improving educational quality in sparsely populated, rural or hard-to-reach locations. The multigrade class, in which a single teacher is responsible for several grades at the same time, can make a decisive contribution to a country's Education for All programme. The decision to maintain a multigrade class and the deliberate choice of a small school with a single class are both determined by economic and educational necessity: In a great many cases, the only alternative to these choices is not to provide educational facilities at all. Multigrade classes are not a topgap measure; rather, they are the only means of providing schooling in some locations. This volume presents an overview of the history of such classes in the world over the past 50 years. The authors also identify the factors that determine the failure or success of multigrade education. Lastly, the volume offers educational planners a coherent, flexible and realistic set of measures for increasing provision in rural areas, particularly in the French-speaking countries of sub Saharan Africa.

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