By Gerald Obote, Cohort 10 Fellow, Hoima District
At the start of the new school year in February 2025, 13-year-old Ignatius Alinaitwe began Primary 5 at St. Ludovico Primary School in Hoima District, Uganda. He was eager to start the school year, having passed his final assessments for Primary 4, and joyfully looked forward to learning with his Primary 5 peers.
Unfortunately, Ignatius struggled to understand the concepts being taught in the classroom and slowly became disengaged. The material felt overwhelming, which only deepened his withdrawal and made it more difficult for him to keep up with the lessons. The love of learning he once felt began to diminish, leaving him feeling isolated and frustrated in the classroom as he tried to manage the demands of the new material. Soon, his attendance became inconsistent as he missed many days of school.
Like many children in East Africa, Ignatius faced challenges after transitioning to a new grade level, not because he lacked the ability to learn, but because of a mismatch between his learning pace and the speed at which the teacher moved through lessons. With high teacher-to-learner ratios in Uganda, teachers often struggle to assess each child’s abilities and adapt lessons accordingly. Consequently, children like Ignatius can lose interest and feel disconnected from learning and the classroom.
THE ROOTS TO RISE SOLUTION
Fortunately, Margret Nyangoma, a teacher at Ignatius’s school, is one of the 1,200 teachers in Uganda trained in 2025 alone on Building Tomorrow’s remedial Roots to Rise (R2R) program. R2R supports children like Ignatius in mastering foundational literacy and numeracy skills — skills essential to academic success and beyond.
As Ignatius’s attendance and performance began to decline, his teacher referred him to Margret, who evaluated Ignatius’s learning level. The R2R baseline assessment showed that although Ignatius was in Primary 5 in school, he did not have the foundational skills needed to succeed at that grade level. He was placed at R2R level 1 in numeracy and level 2 in literacy, indicating he could only perform single-digit addition and subtraction and read simple sentences, respectively. To help him catch up, Margret enrolled him in an R2R camp at the school.
For one hour a day and three days per week for about three months, Ignatius and other R2R learners gathered under the shade of a tree in their schoolyard to take part in interactive learning activities led by Margret. In these sessions, Margret grouped learners according to their abilities rather than by age to create an optimal learning experience. In addition to literacy and numeracy, the R2R camp integrated components of social-emotional learning and Universal Design for Learning techniques she learned in her R2R teacher training to foster an inclusive and well-rounded learning environment.
MEANINGFUL RESULTS
After completing an endline assessment following the 40-hour camp, Margret observed a significant improvement in Ignatius. Despite starting the camp well below his Primary 5 grade level, Ignatius had made remarkable progress, advancing to level 4 (graduate) in both subjects, successfully meeting the Minimum Proficiency Level (MPL). The MPL is a recognized benchmark indicating that a student possesses the knowledge and skills expected for their grade. For Ignatius, this meant he could now comfortably perform all four basic math operations and read and comprehend a simple story. “Ignatius has improved significantly. He can now read, write, and do math much better than before,” Margret noted. Ignatius now attends school regularly and enjoys his classes in Primary 5 — a marked improvement from before he participated in the R2R program.
But perhaps the most powerful change has been one no test score can measure: Ignatius found his confidence. And with it, a new purpose. He has become a role model for his peers and now spends some of his time tutoring students who face the same struggles he once had.
R2R AT SCALE
Roots to Rise has helped more than 700,000 children like Ignatius strengthen their literacy and numeracy skills, and since the beginning of 2025 alone, Building Tomorrow’s Community Education Teams have reached nearly 195,000 children through in-school and community-based R2R learning camps. By the end of their camp, 63.2% of Primary 3 to 5 students could read and comprehend a paragraph or more, up from just 14.4% at baseline.
Building Tomorrow understands foundational learning creates possibilities worthy of every child’s promise. With better foundational skills, children achieve better grades, pursue higher education, and lead healthier lives. And just like Ignatius, boost their confidence, setting them up for success beyond the classroom.
Well done, Ignatius!
