Offline version of learning videos app made available in three districts for education

To make education accessible, SABAQ, an organisation that provides free learning videos for K-12 students, in collaboration with the Sindh school education and literacy department (SELD), Unicef, and Malala Fund, has deployed its offline version of the SELD Learning App in 67 public schools in three districts of the province, Badin, Tando Muhammad Khan and Tando Allah Yar.

The SELD Learning App contains content for pre-primary and primary grades in the form of animated video lessons, stories, flipbooks, and quizzes. The App aims at providing digital lessons for KG-5 during the Covid-19 crisis to students across Sindh and is aligned with Sindh’s curriculum. Moreover, the App’s interface is available in three languages – English, Urdu, and Sindhi – so children with different backgrounds can benefit from it.

SABAQ and the SELD selected test-qualified government teachers to implement blended lessons in the schools. A total of 89 teachers have been trained in delivering tech-enabled lessons in government schools using the application.

Dr Fouzia Khan, SELD’s head of curriculum wing, said the collaboration of these organisations for blended learning would empower teachers of the government schools to change Sindh’s education system. The teachers receive the ongoing training and mentorship from SABAQ to ensure a smooth execution of the project in other districts, she said and assured that the Sindh government would fully cooperate with these organisations to reduce educational disruption.

Sharing her experience, Misbah, a teacher from Badin said: “This is the first time that an innovation like SELD App has been introduced in public schools and we are trained in blended learning. Usually, it is the private sector that benefits from such initiatives but now teachers and students of the state-run schools will also utilise from this opportunity.”

From Tando Allah Yar district, another schoolteacher Sobia, who recently completed her training, also voiced her support, saying, “As a result of the pandemic, I had lost all hope for my students. I felt I won’t be able to help them or reduce their learning losses. But the SELD App has given us hope to help students catch up.”

According to the SABAQ administration, community mobilisation activities have been carried out by them, in which parents and community members were trained in downloading and using the App during school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the support of the government, SABAQ aims to scale this successful pilot project across all the public schools in Sindh in order to be the catalyst for the introduction of digital learning in Pakistan’s education system.