In 1986, Sunil was only 7 years old when he dropped out of school.  Living in rural India and working on his family’s farm, Sunil frequently missed school, often for many days at a time. He quickly fell behind and became disconnected with school, ultimately leaving it altogether.  Sunil, now 32, barely knows how to read or write and he can perform only the most basic arithmetic. Without a quality basic education, he was forced to take up selling clothes on the street to scratch out a living when his family sold their farm some 15 years ago.

Unfortunately Sunil grew up when there were few, if any, resources available to families and children to help prevent children from falling behind and dropping out of school. But this doesn’t have to be the case for children today. Unlike when Sunil was a child, there have been advancements in technology and prolific jumps in internet availability and accessibility, so now children have access to very powerful resources to help them learn when they are not able to be in school full-time.

As children around the world return to school, it seems appropriate to share two math resources Global Partnership for Education partner countries could leverage to address barriers children face going to school, helping to ensure stories such as Sunil’s become a something of the past.  School teachers, parents, and children can all use these resources to supplement the math curriculum.   With access to the internet, both resources provide free material.

The resources help students:

• Review concepts they missed in class on their own time;
• Break down information into manageable pieces, or the fundamentals of a math concept, which students can build on to learn the larger math concept;
• Allow students to practice fundamentals of math concepts so that they can perform better in school.

The Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that aims to provide free education globally.  Salman Khan, who developed the academy, visions that every child, anywhere in the world, despite their socioeconomic class, will be able to learn math, and other subjects using his videos.   For example, Khan says a even a boy living in the slums of Calcutta, who has to miss school so that he can work and support his family, can use the resources available from The Khan Academy to learn lessons on his own, at this own pace. The academy offers over 2400 free video lessons on mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics and computer science.  Lessons cover all levels, so you can start with arithmetic to complex algebra.

In his TED conversation, Khan discusses a case study from Los Altos, California, in which the teacher used Khan’s videos with minimum direct instruction or lectures in front of the class.  As each student worked at their own pace learning material from Khan’s videos, the teacher found that she could spend more time working with each student answering their specific questions.  At the end of class, all the students finished their lessons on time, and mastered all the concepts.

Students can watch lessons, practice what they’ve learned, and even test themselves to see how they’ve done!  Each video is 10 minutes long and designed so that a student can open a web browser and watch the lesson on their computer.

JUMP Math

JUMP Math is a program based out of Canada, and provides a number of resources for teachers and students.  I had the opportunity of speaking with the founder of JUMP Math, John Mighton.  Mighton explained that JUMP Math recognizes that many students have trouble with math because they can’t remember basic math skills to be able to perform complex mathematics.  Therefore, JUMP Math’s lessons focus on students practicing math skills in incremental steps that build on each other to more complex concepts.

JUMP Math’s lessons are designed in a way that teachers can ask students critical questions, and feedback, as they are learning the steps leading to a complex problem.  The JUMP Math Teachers Guides provide lessons for math curriculum grades one through eight and come with assessments and practice.

JUMP Math’s work is similar to the work our colleague, Helen Abadzi, has researched and implemented in reading – “automatizing knowledge” – a phrase used by neuropsychologists, which means reducing a problem to its component parts and then building it back up incrementally, or an emphasis on rehearsing the basics before digesting a complex problem.

There are a number of free teacher resources on JUMP’s website.  JUMP also provides various resources for students such as workbooks.  Watch this video to see the impact it has made on children and educators.

Sunil’s story is real. Without skills in basic math, reading and writing, Sunil’s opportunities and choices for growth were extremely limited. Although many children today face the same challenges and obstacles for gaining a basic education Sunil faced 25 years ago, the future of those children can be different thanks to resources such as the two discussed above. Thinking outside the framework of the conventional school, and using resources such as the ones mentioned above, partner developing countries, donors, and other stakeholders, can all work together as a global partnership on education to ensure we don’t see any more cases like Sunil.

Click here to see how the Global Partnership for Education is working to prevent more kids from ending up like Sunil.