Language Changes Tomorrow (LCT) Nepal Pilot was implemented in 4 schools in a rural ethnolinguistics community in Nepal from November 2022 to March 2023. A total of 75 Grade 2-3 students age range between 7-9 participated in the pilot. This digital report captures samples of the evidence collected during the three monitoring and evaluation visits. They serve to measure the effectiveness and initial sustainability of the pilot implementation and outcomes.
The LCT Nepal Pilot Programme has two goals: helping children to learn to read in their mother tongue and helping children to put their learning about personal health and hygiene into practice. To achieve these goals, a full-coloured LCT student book containing 19 level-appropriate reading texts on personal health and hygiene topics was published. It was used weekly during the mother tongue subject period to provide students with mother tongue reading practice. The book also contains discussion questions and application activities that encourage students to put their learning into practice. Some examples include a three-week tracking of students' daily routine activities such as brushing teeth, cutting nails. The pilot also implemented a classroom cleaning duty roster that assigned each student responsibility to keep the classroom clean.
The LCT Nepal pilot anticipates the following results:
Result #1: Children will gain knowledge and hands-on experience in addressing common health and hygiene issues in their daily lives through the mother-tongue subject.
Result #2: Children will retain and discuss learnings with parents/teachers who will assist them in taking their learnings outside the classroom and taking action to solving health and hygiene issues that they have in their communities.
Result #3: Follow-up visits will show advances in children’s learning and understanding of material and there will be enthusiasm to take and apply classroom material outside of school.
Evidence for Result #1
Result #1: Children will gain knowledge and hands-on experience in addressing common health and hygiene issues in their daily lives through the mother-tongue subject.
During the December 2022 pilot class observation visit, project team members noted that students in all four schools participated actively in class. They paid attention to the teacher's teaching. Their responses during class discussion showed understanding of the topics discussed, such as the reasons and the importance of keeping good personal hygiene habits. Students also gave their own opinions during the topic discussions.
Students in two of the four participating schools had stronger reading ability and they were able to read the text slowly but independently. In the other two schools, some students followed the teacher or another student's reading during the class reading practice time.
Below is a short clip taken in one of the schools during the December 2022 LCT class observation visit.
During the December 2022 visit, teachers also reported that students showed an increased awareness of the topics learnt. In addition, they showed initial changes in their behaviour, such as becoming more punctual after the first lesson on Daily Routine. Below is one of the teachers' interviews.
For topics such as Daily Routine and Good Habit, students took part in an application activity where they would indicate in their textbook daily for three weeks if they did the stated activity. Their behavioural change was monitored by the teacher and it was also indicated on the students' achievement chart hung up in the classroom. That motivated many students to put their learning into practice.
One positive observation by both the teachers and the project team members is students' honesty in declaring their behaviours during that tracking period. Students were open to admit to the teacher or during the interview if they had not done the daily routine task. The teachers would encourage the students to carry out the task the following days. Teachers felt that the LCT pilot is valuable in also building up the students' character and value such as honesty.
Impact Story - Bibek Tamang, Grade 3 Student
Bibek Tamang's teachers told us that they used to think Bibek as a naughty student who liked to disobey rules. Before the village road construction started, Bibek and many other Grade 2 and 3 boys in his school liked to slide down the steep mud slopes in the village for fun. Not only did they get all dirty, it was also very dangerous. Because of that, one teacher decided to write a lesson about that topic to include in the LCT book. Now, Lesson 17 has become the most favourite LCT lesson among the students in Bibek's class!
When the project team interviewed Bibek during the February 2023 evaluation trip, Bibek said he and his friends no longer slide down the mud slope anymore. He was scolded by his parents when he went home with dirty and torn school uniform. Through the lesson, he learnt the consequences of playing in the dust or mud, which include dirty limbs, damaged clothes and potentially other problem like getting injured or having dust getting into their eyes.
Evidence for Result #2
Result #2: Children will retain and discuss learnings with parents/teachers who will assist them in taking their learnings outside the classroom and taking action to solving health and hygiene issues that they have in their communities.
Impact Story - Sujan Tamang, Grade 3 student
Sujan Tamang is a Grade 3 student who lives very far from his school. He needs to walk for more than an hour each way everyday. Because of this, he was often late for school and he had no time or energy left to do homework or study. The first LCT lesson's topic was about daily routine and the importance of doing different tasks in a timely manner. After that lesson, he told his teacher that he needed to stay nearer to school so that he could have more time to study. Because his grandmother lives nearer to the school, he persuaded his mother to let him stay with his grandmother during the week. Since then, the teacher reported that he has been more punctual in attending school!
The team visited and interviewed Sujan again in February 2023. After a short period of staying with his grandmother, Sujan has moved back to stay with his family. Nonetheless, he has remained punctual in attending school by leaving home earlier than before. The team was glad to see that Sujan and family arrived at a more sustainable solution.
The project team conducted a parents meeting at each school in December 2022. Attendees included the participating students' parents, School Management Committee members, Grade 3 class teacher and the school headmaster. During the meeting, the project team staff read several stories from the LCT reading text to showcase the topics covered. As the texts were written in the community's mother tongue, parents showed great interest and listened attentively to the text. The project staff also discussed with parents their role in their children's learning and application on the topic of personal health and hygiene, such as toilet construction at home, toilet usage, children’s personal hygiene, junk food, brush teeth etc.
Parents' responses were generally positive. They were willing to contribute and participate. Some parents expressed that they tried to support but they had not started making any changes at home yet. Others admitted that they had not paid attention to teach their children the topic of personal hygiene before. They became more aware through the meeting, and they would want to take action to make changes.
Family Interview - Pradesh Ghale (Grade 3 Student) and his mother, Dilee Ghale
Pradesh Ghale is a Grade 3 student. His favourite lesson is Lesson 5, a story about a child who did not like to cut his fingernails. His nails were therefore long and dirty and he got sick as a result. After that lesson, he shared what he learnt with his sister and mother. When we visited his mother at his home in February 2023, she shared her joy of seeing her children getting education and the influence her son’s learning on health and hygiene has on her personally:
Evidence for Result #3
Result #3: Follow-up visits will show advances in children’s learning and understanding of material and there will be enthusiasm to take and apply classroom material outside of school.
From 21 February to 1 March 2023, the project team and LEAD Asia-Pacific's facilitator visited the four schools again to evaluate the progress of the pilot programme. Both teachers and students who were interviewed in each school mentioned that they have enjoyed the LCT lessons. Teachers commended the advantage of using students' mother tongue to teach topics like personal health and hygiene, as it was easy for students to grasp and retain their learning. Texts written in the form of songs/poems and stories are especially students' favourite text types that enabled them to engage well with the topics. This was echoed by students' responses that learning and reading in their mother tongue is easy because they could understand what they read, even if they are still developing their reading proficiency.
Family Interview - Amsu Tamang (Grade 2 Student) and her mother, Sumita Tamang
Amsu Tamang's mother, Sumita, is glad to see several changes in her daughter during this period when the LCT pilot was implemented. She noted that her daughter has became less picky about snacks and she would eat whatever that was prepared for her. In the lesson about basic personal health and hygiene, students’s application activity was to indicate on the 3-week checklist if they carried out those personal hygiene tasks. Some examples include washing hands before meals, washing hands after using toilet, nail cutting, combing hair etc. Initially Amsu did not do all the tasks. She was honest to leave those items in the checklist blank. However, upon seeing her friends’ books that were full of ticks, she became very motivated to carry out those tasks from then on. Even though the activity only required the students to track their application for 3 weeks, Sumita commented that Amsu has continued to keep those habits. She was glad to see her daughter takes ownership of her daily routine now.
Among all the subjects, Amsu finds the mother tongue subject the most interesting. She would copy the mother tongue reading texts several times more than required by her teacher as homework. The project staff also noticed that Amsu’s reading skill in her mother tongue has improved a lot over time.
After the 2022 December school visit (see the first video of Result #1 above), Samir Tamang (2nd row left) and his classmates have continued to carry out the good habits activities. Even though the activity only required the class to track their good habits for three weeks, all of them were eager to continue marking their checklist.
During the February 2023 evaluation visit, the project team arrived at Samir's school before the class started. We saw Samir's classmates Sunita Tamang and Sonia Tamang sweeping their classroom because they were on duty that day. Their teacher mentioned that the students have since picked up the habit to follow the classroom cleaning duty roster. They would do their duty automatically when it was their turn. It is wonderful to see these students continuing with their classroom cleaning duty roster beyond the activity period.
Photo on the left: Samir and his classmates showing their favourite LCT lessons.
The project team visited two of the LCT implementing schools again in May 2023. They interviewed four students who participated in the LCT pilot. All four students said they enjoyed reading the LCT book because it was easy to read and understand the content using the local language. Among them, Sabita Vika (12 years old) was not from the local community. However, she understood and spoke the local language with the other children. She also found the illustrations helped her comprehension.
Sofia and Sonia said they learned to sleep early and wake up on time from the first lesson in the book. When asked whether they still applied what they learnt at home, both said that they did. Sofia said she even taught her sister Jasmina to do the same. Compared to before, she said she wakes up a bit earlier, but she still feels lazy sometimes. Sonia said she also helps with washing dishes and cleaning around the house as she has learned from the book.
Sunita and Sabita said they learned about their own hygiene and cleanliness and that they have been applying these at home. For example, cutting their nails, washing their body, clothes, dishes, bring water and clean the house They still do this after going to Grade 4.
Other Evidence of Change in the Community
Impact Story - Pragati Tamang, LCT Pilot Implementing Teacher
Ms Pragati Tamang is one of the teachers implementing the LCT pilot for the Grade 2 & 3 students in her school. Having reached Lesson 9 of the book now, she realised that her family should eat less instant noodle and more local food as snacks at home. She felt that as a teacher, she needed to apply the lessons she was teaching in her own family first before teaching others.
Ms Pragati was interviewed again in April 2023 together with the other teacher, Ms Budimaya Tamang, on their evaluation of the LCT pilot. Both of them reaffirmed that the use of mother tongue in teaching was very helpful in transmitting the health and personal hygiene knowledge. They also felt that discussion topics and application activities were appropriate practical for Grade 3 students to apply their learning. As such, they would want to continue using the LCT reading materials in the coming school year by incorporating it as a weekly lesson into the Grade 3 Mother Tongue subject.
Impact Story - Mr. Binaya Tamang, School Management Committee Member
After the LCT pilot implementation started, Mr. Binaya came across the LCT reading book one day and he read the lesson texts. One lesson story was about the importance to separate utensils and plates for people and animals to prevent sickness. He was surprised to realise he and his family had been ignorant about such basic hygiene matter and they made that mistake. He was thin and he started wondering if that could be the reason why he never gained weight. Since then, his family changed that habit and stopped mixing the plates and utensils for animals and people's use.
The project team also interviewed some mothers during their follow-up visit in May 2023. The mothers agreed that the use of MT was important to help in children's understanding of these topics. Some of the parents also said the children sang some of the songs at home. One mother even recited a few lines.
Impact Story - Shrijana Tamang, Mother of a Participating Student
Shrijana knew about the LCT book by seeing it in her son's bag. She heard him singing a song about waking up early, but his habit has not changed. Nonetheless, when a recycle man came around after the school year ended in late March, Shrijana sold the rest of the old textbooks but she decided to keep the LCT book! She wanted to read it because it was written in her own language and the contents seemed interesting and useful. This shows that she found the LCT contents and reading material useful not just for her child, but also practical for her own use.
Request for adult mother tongue literacy class
During the December 2022 parents meeting in one village, a grandmother showed great interest in the LCT book and its contents. She requested for mother tongue literacy classes for illiterate adults like her so that they too could learn to read in their mother tongue. The project team is glad that the LCT pilot not only makes an impact among the participating school teachers and students, it has also aroused the illiterate community members' interest and desire to learn to read in their mother tongue.
All in all, both the community and the project team has found the LCT pilot an impactful programme for the children. Having discussed with the teachers, the LCT lesson materials will continue to be incorporated in the Grade 3 mother tongue subject in the coming school year. Some of the higher level reading texts developed during the LCT Writer Workshop are also incorporated into the Grade 4 mother tongue subject book for use in the coming year.