Struggle, adaptation, and hope: Reframing catch-up learning beyond external solutions

How can children’s and communities’ experiences drive foundational learning programmes that are rooted in their realities? How can schools and communities be helped to figure out and define what is meaningful and effective for the children they nurture—building belief, capacity, and a shared sense of success and what this can look like for different children? What tools and structures can be co-created or surfaced to help explore possibilities beyond constrained notions of 'localisation' or externally framed 'problems'? And what is the role of formal education systems in embedding, scaling, and sustaining these innovations—and how open are they to transformation?

These are questions that World Vision (WV) have been grappling with through their Catch Up Programme (CUP), an initiative designed to address the learning needs of children who are most affected by educational disruptions, particularly in vulnerable communities, applying play-based teaching at the right level in flexible learning spaces. CUP’s primary objective is to support the acquisition of foundational literacy, numeracy, and social emotional learning skills, providing a pathway for children to (re)engage with their education.  The Open University’s Centre for the Study of Global Development has undertaken collaborative  research with WV to explore these questions in Chile, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

In all three settings, local schools and communities reached targeted vulnerable children, although children with disabilities were less likely to be included, highlighting systemic barriers to inclusion. Most children (70% or more) are learning new literacy and numeracy skills within 16-20 weeks; for example, moving from not reading to reading letters, from reading letters to reading words.  However, improvements in literacy were harder to achieve than numeracy, in particular, for boys.  In parallel, social emotional learning skills developed for most children.

Common areas for further exploration emerged; particularly, in relation to sufficiency (do the learning time and learning gains enable children to successfully complete primary school?), those not yet learning (who are these children and what challenges do they face?); resistance (can school systems respond, adapt and change?).

What is notable across the settings is the shared ownership of these initiatives between communities, schools and education officials, and how this is stimulated by and intertwined with the freedom for communities to redesign and adapt the principles and resources offered by WV, as illustrated in the following three vignettes.

In Chile, a pilot implementation reached 400+ migrant children in temporary learning spaces and schools.  Local teams built on a set of flexible session guides and learning sequences provided by WV International, adapting and evolving them to suit their context and children’s needs. Local facilitators applied the adapted Spanish phonics-based literacy curriculum, and embedded culturally sensitive stories, resources and approaches for all learning activities.  The facilitators are paid qualified teachers, supported by specialist CUP training. They choose the size of learning clubs, timing of sessions and selection of learning activities. 

By aligning CUP with what children are learning in class, we’ve been able to reinforce key concepts.

School Principal

In Ethiopia, a community-based ‘try and learn’ implementation reached 300+ vulnerable children in and out-of- school in conflict affected areas. The topics and learning sequences developed by WV International were again taken as a flexible starting point. Local education officials adapted the curriculum, including phonics-based literacy, into Amharic, aligning with local cultures and available resources. The paid facilitators were mainly teaching graduates, supported by specialist CUP training. Facilitators chose larger club sizes to help meet demand and offered additional remediation sessions.

Our role is to ensure the programme aligns with the community’s priorities.

Centre Management Committee member

In Zimbabwe, an at-scale school-based implementation reached 16,500+ children in communities affected by poverty, climate crises and food insecurity. Schools have access to the WV programme outline and example session plans. They choose learning topics from the examples given and their own experience. Whilst literacy is in English, facilitation is in English and local language(s). Facilitators are unpaid community volunteers, trained by local teachers, and/or teachers themselves. Schools choose which children to focus upon using CUP assessments and teacher observations, and the number and timing of learning sessions.

In the past I thought teachers are not doing enough, but now I see that teacher, community and parent participation is needed for children to learn and pass.

CUP Community Facilitator

These vignettes show how participatory and dynamic community-led adaptations can expand who leads learning and how it happens, flexing and challenging the informal and formal binary. When teachers and facilitators see a child progress, it builds belief and momentum. These are not just ‘pockets’ of innovation—they are blueprints for systems transformation.

In a landscape review, examples of accelerated and catch-up learning initiatives are profiled that are grappling with these issues. How do we collectively take what we are doing in ‘pockets’ and embed these in scalable and sustainable ways across education systems? Children can’t wait for so-called ‘perfect solutions’. They need systems brave enough to change — and bold enough to trust in local capacity, strengthen it with support, and scale the responses that are already showing what’s possible. Join in our conversation and call for action at our webinar, 27 May 2025: Catch-Up Then What? : Aligning Education Systems with Children's Realities.

Written by Claire Hedges (The Open University), Janelle Zwier (World Vision), Ale Okada (The Open University), Margaret Ebubedike (The Open University)