student in class

Zambia

Who we’re helping

Lusaka Girls Secondary School

Lusaka Girls Secondary School (LGSS), in central Lusaka, has 28 classrooms, 82 teachers, and 1901 female students from grades 8 to 12.

Some of the challenges faced at LGSS (reported by LGSS administration) are: large class sizes of 55-60 students, absenteeism, girls’ lateness and lack of concentration due to walking up to 11km (2 hours) for classes that start at 7:30 a.m., low pass rate in national exams, and overall just “keeping the girls in school”.  LGSS has a strong agricultural program including a fish pond (farm), and growing seasonal crops on campus, with room for expansion.

Libala Basic School

Libala Basic School has 1700 children, from Kindergarten to Grade 9, and is located in an underprivileged area of Lusaka. It will cost $40,000 to provide permanent digital education tools for all teachers and students at Libala Basic School.

Cobet Community School

This is the first of 87 community schools, which are in a very low-income zone of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.

Education in Zambia

“Zambia has achieved near universal primary school completion levels – national statistics indicate a completion rate of 91.8 per cent at Grade 7. But this masks considerable regional disparities, with the northern region recording 81.3 per cent (72 per cent for female students) and Lusaka a rate of 78.6 per cent. For children in the early years, the coverage of care, learning and education services remains persistently low. Overall, girls continue to be at a disadvantage with a large number of them dropping out in the upper primary and secondary grades, and poorer levels of transition to junior secondary and senior secondary levels…

…Other barriers to children transitioning and completing secondary school include school fees introduced in Grade 8, other costs related to education (such as the cost of not otherwise contributing to household income), and the long distances to many schools. For girls at secondary level, there are also barriers around the lack of menstrual hygiene facilities, the low value placed by some communities on girls’ receiving a secondary education, teenage pregnancy, and child marriage.”
Unicef.org