School Surveys Lead to Better Learning Outcomes

Orant’s sponsored schools provide high quality education to rural Malawian students

School Surveys Lead to Better Learning Outcomes
Orant's employee Amanda Kazembe conducts surveys with local school directors.

Orant’s Education Program Supports Local Schools

Since 2017, Orant has sponsored students by sending them to school all around the country. At the end of 2023, our Education Program started focusing their support in schools around our Kasese catchment area. We distributed school materials such as books, laboratory materials and study materials and we greatly strengthened a school library. We believe that by supporting schools, we will be able to have a greater impact on more students in Malawi.

Orant’s Education Program Supports Local Schools

Understanding Challenges to Create Better Learning Outcomes

Data is one of the most important tools in all our programs as it helps us measure whether our programs are making an impact or when it’s time for change. For the past three weeks, our Education program has been surveying schools in our catchment area. There are a total of 24 schools, 20 primary and four secondary schools that we plan to survey.

We believe that the survey will be very instrumental to the growth of our Education Program and to the support that the Program will render to local schools. The survey will help us know the gaps that are there in our Program offerings and the challenges that schools face.

The survey gathers all kinds of important information about the school and is designed to answer lots of important questions: What classes are offered? What materials are lacking? How many students are there? How many teachers are there? When the data is combined, we will have a better understanding of where to focus Education Program resources at large, but we will also have a deeper understanding of each individual school.

Designing School Interventions

We are conducting the survey to learn how best we can support nearby schools. Each school, like every student, has its own strengths and weaknesses. By performing this survey, we will develop an in-depth understanding of the needs of each of the local primary and secondary schools. The information will be useful in designing interventions for individual schools and allow us to allocate resources as efficiently as possible. 

Ultimately we will implement interventions that are tailored to a specific community and school and designed to contribute to students’ academic performance and personal growth!

The Orant Journal