School Readiness Initiative in Zimbabwe

The School Readiness Initiative (SRI) in Zimbabwe The School Readiness Initiative (SRI) in Zimbabwe is a national early childhood education programme supported by the Federer Foundation (FF) and implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) and other partners to strengthen the quality, equity, and consistency of Early Childhood Education (ECE) for ECE A and B learners. Between 2019 and 2025, SRI developed and tested a package of practical interventions, including teacher professional development, community engagement to promote shared responsibility, and routine monitoring of child development, thereby creating an evidence-based foundation for wider adoption and sustained system strengthening. In alignment with national priorities under the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE), the SRI focused on improving children's readiness for formal schooling through integrated interventions spanning ECD service delivery, educator capacitation, policy advocacy at national and local levels, community engagement, school feeding programmes, learner assessment through the Smart Tablet Learning Early Assessment Tool, and systems strengthening. Some components such as the Smart Tablet for Early Learning Assessment (STELA), a continuous assessment on child development, are tested to be adopted by the Ministry of Primary and Education Secondary (MoPSE) and scaled in line with MoPSE priorities to all primary schools in Zimbabwe.

The impact objectives include the following:-

• increased participation of children in organised learning programmes for ECD A and B,
• reduced repetition rates in Grades 1 and
• 2 and reduced dropout rates in Grades 1 and 2.

The initiative generated critical evidence on what works in advancing school readiness in resource-constrained and diverse contexts. It also contributed to strengthening coordination between the government, civil society, and local authorities. Over 1,300 primary schools, at least 50 local authorities, and over 140 parliamentarians (in the 9th and 10th parliaments) were reached. The initiative is now in its final phase, code-named 'From Projects to Programmes', with a deliberate shift towards sustainability, consolidation, and upscaling of proven approaches within national systems reaching out to 8014 primary school in Zimbabwe.