Improving Literacy and Numeracy in Poor Schools: The Main Challenge in Developing Countries

Hepp, P. and Laval, E.

The most important educational challenge in most developing countries is that of radically improving early literacy and numeracy in their more deprived schools, many of them located in isolated rural areas. These schools may easily account for more than 30% percent of the student population in many countries; therefore any progress made on this problem may have a significant impact on a nation's human resources. The ability to write fluently, understand written text in their native language, and do basic mathematics is a basic level of achievement that will immensely influence the children's intellectual development and therefore their future working opportunities. This paper describes the Enlaces strategy designed to help the Ministry address this problem at a national level using ICT as a tool and as a resource for teachers and students. Given the social, economical and cultural context of these schools, Enlaces has been working on a number of teacher support activities, special ICT tools (mainly software) and relevant content related to literacy and numeracy. Its goal is to motivate children, providing them with content that is significant to them and with software tools that may improve their present levels of achievements.

Cite as: Hepp, P. and Laval, E. (2003). Improving Literacy and Numeracy in Poor Schools: The Main Challenge in Developing Countries. In Proc. Young Children and Learning Technologies. Selected papers from the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 3.5 Open Conference, Melbourne, Australia. CRPIT, 34. Wright, J., McDougall, A., Murnane, J. and Lowe, J., Eds. ACS. 53-57.

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