In the 3rd grade classroom at Ecole Patti, near Makalondi in Niger’s Tilaberri Region, four Fulani girls huddle around a single textbook. But they struggle to read the words. While it’s a given that learning outcomes are affected when students must share a textbook among four students, this is not a textbook issue - it is a language issue.

There are 10 ethnic groups in Niger, with 10 different local languages. However, under Niger’s traditional primary school curriculum, students learn in French with teachers who only speak French, but not the local languages.

Niger has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. With the support of GPE, Niger’s Ministry of Education is piloting a new curriculum in 500 schools in three regions of the country, including Niamey, the capital. The new curriculum uses local language almost exclusively in the early grades and gradually introduces more and more French over students’ six years of primary school.

Kadidia N’Diaye is a second grade teacher at Ecole Madina III, one of the pilot 500 schools in Niger. Kadidia has been a teacher for 19 years, and for all but the last two years she has taught using the traditional Francophone curriculum, “It was really hard to teach with the traditional system,” she says. “The new curriculum makes teaching much easier."

The new curriculum and the textbooks that accompany it have also been made more relevant to the lives of the students who are using them: “Before, most of the situations presented in the textbooks were not something we would find in our own local environment,” says Kadidia. “But now the books feature things the children see every day like a markets or, like the lesson we are doing today, a blacksmith’s shop."

A student practices vocabulary words from the blacksmith’s shop scenario in Kadidia N’Diaye’s second grade classroom. “Today I sold some stuff and customers came to buy things from me,” says student Faysel Sumeila, 7. “I learned the word for rake in Zarma, and shovel. I didn’t know those things, but today I learned them.”

After practicing at the board with several students, the rest of the class practices writing words from the blacksmith’s shop example. "Because it’s relevant and it’s in the local language, it is much easier for the students to understand, and because of the training I received, I can use it to create situations like this to make learning fun,” Kadidia says.

"It is easier for me as a teacher because I can easily pass on the learning to the students. And it is easier for the students because they receive everything in their own language. They can freely express themselves and understand what is being talked about. And for me, the biggest difference is that, right from the first grade the children can read—easily and flawlessly," Kadidia explains.

The results are already impressive. Studies comparing student performance in traditional (Francophone) schools, Franco-Arabic schools and bilingual schools (where students learn in their mother tongue and French), found that bilingual schools ranked highest with French-speaking schools ranked last.

Madina III Primary School Director, Namata Roukeyetou, has seen the benefits of the new curriculum first hand. “Since we started the reform two years ago, the students’ level of understanding has improved so much,” Ms. Roukeyetou says. “Students are more confident, more open minded, and they express themselves so much more fluently—even when they are speaking French."