IGATE bicycles

This was the first thing I saw when we arrived at our primary school for today's research as part of the IGATE (Improving girls' access through transforming education) project in rural Zimbabwe. The first phase of the project focused on increasing attendance at school, and included providing bikes to reduce pupils' journey time to school - without them some pupils would be walking up to 8 km each way to get to this school each day. It was great to see so many of them in use. For the next phase of the project, the Open University will be working in partnership with World Vision and Care International with a focus on children's learning in the classroom. This week's visit is to gather data (qualitative as well as quantitative) to help us understand the context before we start to work on designing a programme of professional development for teachers. It's a real honour and a privilege to be involved.