It is known that learning poverty has still been a critical issue in developing countries, especially in rural and disadvantaged areas where there are structural, social, and economic disadvantage challenges facing schools, hindering the provision of quality education. According to World Bank and UNESCO, more than half of children in developing countries are not able to read a simple story by the end of primary school. This crisis is further worsened during covid-19 pandemic. The three-year ESRC mixed-method project “Enabling Schools”, which I have contributed to, aims to strengthen rural primary schools’ capacities to enable learners to have healthy development and better learning outcomes, despite the contextual challenges. Focusing on foundation-phase learners, this project promotes the collective efforts from rural school leaders, teachers and community members and develops their collaboration to build a ‘reading for enjoyment’ culture in the school. This seminar will give an overview of this research project and the implementation of the Enabling Schools Toolkit in 10 rural primary schools in South Africa. Key findings from assessment and survey data will then be presented. In this seminar, I will also share my reflections on my journey as a postdoc researcher working on this international and interdisciplinary research project.

Huiming Ding completed her PhD at the Schools of Education, University of Leeds. She was a Research Fellow at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, working on the ESRC project "Enabling Schools". She has recently joined Leeds Institute of Medical Education as a Lecturer in Assessment. Her research interests are mainly in evaluating assessment quality and working on assessment data (and other data sources) with quantitative or mixed methods to inform teaching, learning and education policymaking.

Schools as Enabling Spaces to Improve Learning & Health-related Life