Montserrado (Todee), ahead of school starting on 4th September, UMOVEMENT and Democracy International with support from USAID have embarked on the training of over three hundred public primary school administrators and teachers in civic education lesson delivery in 70 public primary schools across 9 education districts within Nimba, Montserrado, and Grand Bassa Counties as part of the pilot phase of the Elections and Democracy Activity (EDA) Program.
The participants are being trained in the usage of the National Curriculum on Citizenship Education and civic education textbooks (grades 1-6) with a focus on key areas of the curriculum such as the meaning of Civic Education (definition of civic education, the importance of civic education and social implication of civic education) suggested methods of teaching civic education (presentation, demonstration roleplay, small group, etc.) general topic of civics education (self-identity, my county Liberia, national identity, citizenship, democracy and governance, 3 branches of government, government and citizens’ relationship, national emblems, etc.).
It’s expected that the teachers will use the content knowledge and training skills acquired to effectively deliver the National Curriculum on Citizenship Education and Textbooks within public primary schools to improve students’ civic skills, attitudes, and behavior.
Also, the teachers will be supported at the school level by UMOVEMENT school monitors through cluster school monitoring and coaching regularly to ensure civic is taught two times a week as required by the Ministry of Education.
Meanwhile, over 12,500 civic education textbooks are ‘oven ready’ for distribution to students per grade level from these schools, with the involvement of parents in the distribution and management of the books to ensure they are returned for possible use by the school the next academic year.
Complementing teachers’ daily lessons will include extracurricular activities such as debate and drama clubs, student elections, quizzing, etc. which are intended to boost students’ practical learning of civic education.
Importantly, the pilot phase of the EDA program will go through an Impact Evaluation (IE) process by Cloudburst University, beginning with a baseline in September and an endline next year. A total of 140 public primary schools have been placed into the research design with 70 as treatment and 70 as control. While evaluation classes are grades 3 and 4 of the treatment schools.
Prior to the training exercises, inception meetings were held in the counties involving County and District Education Officers, School Administrators, Teachers, and Education Stakeholders on the significance of the program.
It can be recalled that the program was initiated last academic year (2022-2023) through a pre-pilot design involving fifteen public primary schools from Montserrado (Vonzo, William D Coleman, Nyeh#1, Koon Town & Zannah Town), Gbarpolu (Beh-Yomo, Zoe, Henry Town, Bomboma & Hilton Duodee), and Nimba (Flumbah, Kpallah, William R. Tolbert, Whipe & Yarsonnoh), drawn from 7 educational districts across the three counties.
Results from the pre-pilot show improved teachers’ performance in content knowledge and teaching methodologies, including students’ learning outcomes.
The goal of objective 2 of the USAID/Elections and Democracy Activity (EDA) program is to improve civic knowledge and a sense of duty – supporting the Ministry of Education to reintroduce civics curriculum in primary schools and provide targeting and technical assistance to CSOs in rural communities to increase the effectiveness of their civics activities.
