Gap Year Program Pilot Completes

The TWII Foundation Reflects on the pilot Gap Year Program:

Through the remedial program, we learned that a central issue was not only providing girls with the resources necessary for the test and to be confident in a subject area, we also needed to teach them how to study in general. In addition, girls who had access to the internet and wifi/computers reported more confidence in their ability to go over difficult homework problems, while those who didn't professed their desire to have more time in small groups outside of class to go over work problems. Many girls commended the long period of time provided to prep for an exam as it made them feel they had time to prepare, however for those who had to work due to finances at home, there were diminishing returns as the class demand increased. In the future, it is important to consider how we may supplement income over the long term to allow these students to focus on their studies. Overall, there were strong reasons to suspect that conducting our own class would provide us with stronger outcomes as we would be better able to regulate the quality and iterate based on what we are learning. However, with populations that are already so vulnerable this would likely be very expensive. It is clear, that the students who were in remedial were academically lower than the other girls in the program and faced an additional set of challenges at home. Yet, given these constraints, our goal of keeping students in the college pathway was met. Each of the students expressed a continued desire to go to a four year college after and had increased grit scores. Many of the students also realized the different tools they would need before entering college and how those tools were in some ways different than what they needed in high school. Altogether, these girls made immense progress over the past 10 months, our hope is that their progress is reflected in their wassce scores and subsequent admission into the university. Although we recognize that many of these girls may not be able to afford college even if they are admitted, we are hopeful