Developing, implementing and evaluating the SOFIE model: Supporting increased educational access for vulnerable pupils in Malawi

Abstract

Its purpose is to strengthen open, distance and flexible learning (ODFL) systems and structures to increase access to education for young people living in high HIV prevalence areas in Malawi and Lesotho. It seeks to achieve this through developing a new, more flexible model of education that uses ODFL to complement and enrich conventional schooling. It also seeks to encourage application of the new knowledge generated through effective communication to development agencies, governments, development professionals, non-governmental organisations and other interested stakeholders. Access to education and learning is being viewed as a 'social vaccine' for HIV but in high prevalence areas orphans and other vulnerable children are frequently unable to go to school regularly and are thus being deprived of the very thing they need to help protect themselves from infection. In this context sustained access is critical to long term improvements in risk and vulnerability and it requires new models of education to be developed and tested.

Addressing educational access and retention of orphaned and vulnerable children in high HIV prevalence communities in rural Malawi: a flexible approach to learning

“…Propensity score matching and multi-level logistic and linear regression were used to identify and assess the impact of the intervention on agreed pupil outcomes, both overall and for a sub-group of the pupil sample identified as at-risk. Working with the statistician, I used these additional analyses to inform and draft the project's final report for Malawi (see Jere, 2010). Where appropriate for the focus of this study, I make reference to these analyses in this thesis (Jukes, Jere and Pridmore, in press).…”