Youth, Skills, & the Workforce of the Future
Building advocates for Educational Equity
By Teach For Bangladesh
Our solution's stage of development:
GrowthOur solution:
Our mission is to launch a movement of capable, committed, compassionate leaders who share an understanding of inequity and work tirelessly inside and outside classrooms to end its impact on children. Our model creates educators responsible for children’s academic achievement and build lifelong advocates of educational equity in Bangladesh.
Our pitch:
1. Teach For Bangladesh takes a two-part approach to addressing educational inequity. Firstly - working to reduce educational disparity in targeted schools and communities through excellent teaching, empowering local communities and instigating local change. Simultaneously, we are building a movement of leaders who will spearhead the macro-level reform needed to reshape our education system and society in the long-run. Once they have finished the Leadership Development Programme, our Leaders go on into accelerated careers where their positions of influence, (combined with their deep-rooted understanding of the problem at grassroots level) can create systemic change.
2. We recruit the most promising leaders the country has to offer, and through our Fellowship they are empowered to pass on their skills and talents to young people. In classrooms they raise aspirations of young people, give them the vital skills in respect, empathy, a desire for learning and a belief that they have a part to play in society and a drive to make it equitable. This empowerment means that children take more active ownership over their own learning, recognize the importance of education, and aspire to achieve to their upmost potential.
3. Teach For Bangladesh is part of Teach For All - a global network of 45 independent, locally led and governed partner organizations and a global organization that works to accelerate the progress in ending educational inequity. We empower teachers & young people to reach out to this network to share game-changing ideas and best practice across the globe, and therefore this enables our learning in Bangladesh to be shared across some of the word's most deprived communities.
The problem:
In Bangladesh overwhelming majority of children do not receive quality education (as measured by national or international standards.) Only half the students who enter school remain long enough to complete Class 5 and achieve less than two-thirds of fundamental competencies in literacy and numeracy. Despite the 12.6% of the total 2017 budget allocated to Primary and Mass Education - actual state investment has not focused on quality of teaching. Around 42% of the 225,659 government teachers hold either Secondary School or Higher Secondary Certifications, alarmingly over 25% nationally are teaching in classrooms without the required one-year “Certificate-in-Education (C-in-Ed)”.
Why our solution will solve the problem:
Teach For Bangladesh believes that every child deserves the fundamental right to attain an excellent education. We are focused on transforming the life opportunities of children from low-income communities, so that they are the workforce of the future. By building a movement of inspirational, high-impact leaders recruited as exceptional graduates committed as a full-time, paid teachers to ending educational disparity in disadvantaged schools. Our unique 2 year-long Leadership Development Programme, known as the Fellowship develops their capacity as leaders who otherwise would not consider teaching. They shape students’ achievement trajectories, increase access to opportunities and instill aspirations for life.
Our target outcomes:
We impact the quality of education that low income children receive and build a movement of leaders to advocate Educational equity. Our primary beneficiary is children and secondary youth. We recruit highly achieved Bangladeshi graduates from top tier universities and place them as teachers in high need classrooms in government and private Schools to shape students’ academic achievement trajectories, affect traits, access opportunities and self-aspiration. Our teachers receive an intensive pre-service residential training for six- week and in-service training such as regular small group coaching, monthly Professional Development sessions, and a Post Graduate degree in Educational Leadership from BRAC University.
How we will measure our progress:
The populations we will benefit initially:
The technologies we employ:
Why our solution is unique:
We define innovation as new solutions that holistically respond to the magnitude and root causes of educational inequity. By investing in building leaders, Teach For Bangladesh (TFB) is developing a force of individuals whose deep immersive experience during the two years of teaching shape them into driven visionaries of longterm transformation Bangladesh requires. They are actively supported to ideate solutions and connected to opportunities that accelerate their impact towards addressing the root causes. Rather than addressing a specific problem, TFB is inspiring individuals through its alumni movement to lead innovative solutions addressing various root causes which perpetuate inequity in Bangladesh.
Why our solution is human-centered:
TFB Leadership Fellows embed themselves into their communities. They spend two years getting to know the grassroots problems which occur across society, but most importantly how they manifest at this community level. They run projects to solve issues at a local level, involving students, parents, families, local community members and local leaders. Our activities are locally informed, ensuring that direct human impact is at the centre of our work. We empower people to be change-makers through action research projects, peer learning and creating a legacy of learning in schools which benefit future generations as well as wider community members.
How people will access our solution:
School partners are selected through close collaboration between TFB and the city’s Education officials. TFB pitches the partnership to short-listed schools who then have to apply to indicate their interest in hosting teachers. School Management Committees are asked to commit to a nominal monthly fee as a token contribution. Fee is on a sliding scale – between 500-2000 BDT/month/teacher. By hosting schools agree to assign them as full-time teachers teaching usually English, Bengali mathematics, science and social science to one classroom of students. Our teachers inspire sharing and collaboration with other teachers are quick to become leaders within a school.
Technology-Readiness Level:
6-8 (Demonstration)Our organization:
Non-ProfitHow we will sustain our team financially:
We are diversifying our funding both locally and internationally through our expanding base of partners. Our portfolio for fiscal year (FY) October 2015 – September 2016 saw funding percentage of 32% from local development organizations; 9% from corporates – out of which 4 out of the 9 partners were local; and 59% from foundations. Current FY has been 100% raised through 6 secured multi-year funding, while Porticus Foundation has renewed their 4th single year partnership. 52.6% of our projected USD 1,550,377 budget for next FY 2017-2018 has been raised while 23.9% is in the pipeline and 9.2% raised of the projected 22% scaled budget of FY 2018-2019. We actively also using Teach For All network partners and existing partners referrals to cultivate and grow of our partners.
The factors limiting our success:
- Declining government relations / change in government, where the authorities see our existence as a criticism of national teaching standards.
- the ability to recruit top graduates because university education in Bangladesh does not provide leaders with the right qualities to complete the fellowship
- An expanding economy which is still establishing itself is potentially volatile. It's reliance upon the garments sector means that the GDP lacks sustainability. We could be impacted by new legislation in the sector which restricts workers and demands that children are drawn into work to support families rather than remaining in education.
How long we have been working on our solution:
4 yearsHow long it will take to develop a pilot:
We have already developed a pilot.How long it will take to scale beyond our pilot:
18+ monthsOur expected annual budget:
$1550377
How much of our budget we've secured to date:
$814725
We're looking for partners in these fields:
Why we're applying to Solve:
Bangladesh
receives large amounts of international aid, but these alleviate symptoms,
rather than addressing root causes. Human-centered work empowers people to
create a society where aid isn't needed
Solve is dedicated to collaboration to create impact on the world. Its focus on human-centered design ensures that we do not leave our beneficiaries as merely recipients of our solution, but genuinely empowers and involves them to create change. Innovation is an important vehicle for TFB to find new solutions to entrenched-problems, so by becoming solvers we hope to influence our wider network of 45 countries to create more innovative solutions also.
Our current partners:
Porticus Foundation, IKEA Foundation, Kadoorie Charitable Foundation, SWIFT, Deutsche Post DHL, BRAC and RahimAfrooz Renewal Energy Ltd.
Solution Team
-
AA
Afeefuddin Ahmed Manager, Partnership Development , Teach For Bangladesh
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Our Solution
Building advocates for Educational Equity