As our 10th year comes to a close, Rising’s CEO, Stephanie Dobrowolski, celebrates with 10 of our favourite highlights from 2024…

We’re thrilled to see the positive results from the second year of the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge (SLEIC), announced by the Education Outcomes Fund last week.

Rising Academies, has officially joined the Keeping Children Safe (KCS) global network. This partnership reinforces Rising Academies’ ongoing commitment to safeguarding children in its network of over 900 schools.

Following two years of impressive, cost-effective results in the pioneering Elimu-Soko pilot, we’re thrilled to announce an expanded partnership with Rwanda's Ministry of Education (MINEDUC). This new MoU will see our literacy and numeracy program, RisingFaster, grow to reach 120 schools and impact over 60,000 students in the coming year.

Building on the successes of the initial pilot in the 2023/2024 Academic Year, our literacy and numeracy partnership with Rwanda’s Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) - “RisingFaster” - has delivered a second year of strong cost-effective results.

We’ve been implementing our accelerated learning program for foundational numeracy skills, “FasterMath”, in 123 Freetown schools since January 2023 and are delighted to share the endline results which were collected in July 2024.

Rising Academy Waterloo has been named a Top 3 finalist for the World’s Best School Prizes 2024. The five World’s Best School Prizes, founded by T4 Education in collaboration with Accenture, American Express and the Lemann Foundation, are the world’s most prestigious education prizes and this year’s winners will share a $50,000 prize fund.

Today has that “first day of school” feeling. Excited, a little bit nervous, a combination of the familiar and the unknown. Wondering what the year ahead will hold, but ready to learn and confident that with a wide network of support, it just might be one of our best years yet.

A personal message from our founders.

Rising Academy Waterloo in Sierra Leone has today been shortlisted for the World’s Best School Prizes. Organised by T4 Education, the World’s Best School Prizes are the world’s most prestigious education awards, which recognise and celebrate the pivotal role schools play in our world.

Last week represented a landmark moment for Liberian education. New Minister, Hon. Dr Jarso Maley Jallah, has committed direct financial support for the Liberian Education Advancement Program (“LEAP” formerly “PSL”) in her 2024 Education Budget. This budget has now officially been signed into law by our President, His Excellency Joseph Boakai, Sr.

Building on the successes we saw in 2023,  new midline results from the evaluation of our large-scale “FasterMath” program in our Freetown City Council (FCC) partnership showed big impacts on teachers’ knowledge and improvements in student learning.

New early stage research by researchers from the University of Oxford and J-PAL have shown very promising early results for our virtual math tutor Rori.

When 17 year old Tyrone Marghuy attended his Junior High School Graduation Ceremony in March 2021, he and his family had little idea that within just a few short weeks, he would become one of the most recognised young men in Ghana.

I’m ending 2023 thinking a lot about the work of improving schools: what makes it so hard but ultimately so fulfilling.

Continuing the success of last year, our private schools in Sierra Leone have delivered outstanding results in the National Primary School Examinations (“NPSE”), which take place at the end of Grade 6. Rising finished #1 out of 600 schools in the rural Western Area region.

We are thrilled to share that we’ve been selected as a participant of the the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI), which has a mission to revolutionise math education globally.

“If we want the AI revolution to be an inclusive one, we need to design solutions that meet the diverse needs of the world’s young people.”

In January 2023, Dalberg, in partnership with the Hempel Foundation, launched their ground-breaking Elimu-Soko Partnership in Rwanda.

This is the story of how, on the 3rd April 2023, I came back to Greenville, the capital of Sinoe County in south-eastern Liberia. But to tell you the story of how I came back, first I need to tell you the story of how I left.