Primary education

During primary school, children learn foundational skills that lead to long-term success in school and in employment. To ensure that students acquire these skills, we use evidence-based approaches — while being responsive to the realities of local contexts — to develop programs in early grade reading, writing and math that produce measurable improvements in learning outcomes. Our expertise includes curriculum and materials development, teacher professional development, community mobilization, gender equality, information and communications technology (ICT) and inclusive education.

Instruction, materials and assessment

The early grades of primary school are particularly critical for learning development. Our literacy experts work to maximize outcomes in these early grades through evidence-based instruction, materials and assessment. We build our programs around the “6 Ts” (text, teaching, tongue, test, time and talk) and the “5 Components” (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension) of reading instruction. Teachers deliver these elements through systematic instruction using relevant materials that integrate meaningful student practice and assessment and are supported by school leaders.

Like reading, math is a crucial skill for children to begin learning in the early grades. We bring math alive using real-life situations as the basis for learning mathematical operations.

Teacher professional development

Changes in teaching practice drive improvements in learning outcomes. We provide teachers with continuing professional development opportunities through coaching and teacher learning circles that complement the techniques taught in traditional workshops. By providing this support at the school level, we help teachers apply consistent, engaging instructional routines that foster children’s active participation.

Sustaining results

Teacher professional development, materials development, language of instruction, assessment — all of these elements have implications at the school and policy levels. To strengthen the sustainability of our programs and support scaling them up, we work closely with ministries of education and facilitate policy dialogue, informed by evidence and learning from our programming, on topics that are central to the long-term success and transformation of education systems.

FHI 360’s programs are improving learning outcomes around the world. For example, in Ghana we are developing a phonics-based reading program in 11 local languages that is enabling children to read and learn for the first time in a language they understand. In Nigeria, we are teaching children how to read in Hausa and are integrating numeracy and gender themes into classroom materials.