The USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program (SHRP) works through existing Ministry systems to provide reading instruction in 12 local languages and English to over 3,000 primary schools. A major focus of the program has been on increasing the use of evidence to inform programs and improve performance. This CIES 2019 presentation highlights examples of program support to the Ministry to take the lead in information generation to increase “buy in” of results and, ultimately, action.

This presentation shares findings from a longitudinal study of the Kenya Tayari program, examining whether ECD effects persisted into primary school, presented by Dr. Benjamin Piper at CIES 2019.

The Government of Tanzania is in the process of implementing a policy of one year of free and compulsory pre-primary education for all children. The policy pronouncement was made within the context of limited resources for education and unclear implementation guidelines. Nonetheless, the declaration of fee-free and compulsory pre-primary led to an immediate increase in enrolment of 46% in the year after the policy was established. While access has improved, quality has not. A recent study of school readiness of children starting Standard 1 in Mainland Tanzania (78% of whom completed pre-school) found no difference between those who attended pre-primary school and those who did not (RTI International, 2017). The study also found weaknesses in the quality of early learning environments, such as high pupil-teacher ratios, poor pedagogy, and lack of high-quality teaching and learning materials. The key challenge facing the Government of Tanzania is how to develop an early learning system that can produce learning, not just broaden access, and to do so in a manner that is sustainable. Earlier experiences with the drive for universal primary education have shown that it is possible (and perhaps easier) to improve access to school without producing any learning. The current study uses a scale and sustainability framework proposed by Crouch and DeStefano (2017) to examine the extent to which the pre-primary (early learning) education system in mainland Tanzania is set up to provide quality pre-primary at scale and sustainably. They identified a core set of functions that education systems should be able to perform to produce learning: (1) set and communicate learning expectations; (2) monitor against expectations; and (3) provide minimum inputs to all schools, and targeted support to struggling schools and classrooms. We interviewed various actors at the national, district and school levels including government officials from the ministries responsible for education and local government; head teachers; teachers; parents of pre-primary aged children; and lecturers and administrators from teacher training colleges. In addition, we reviewed policies, plans, and strategies related to education and development. We found that the early learning system is still developing its capacity to perform the identified core functions. There are some learning goals outlined in a new curriculum, but most of the goals expressed in plans and policies relate to access, not learning, and are not known throughout the system. Monitoring against learning is weak as officials responsible for monitoring schools are unable to do so on a regular basis, and even when they do go, their observation protocols are not linked to learning or curricula expectations. Accountability mechanisms are weak as there is not enough data within the system to track performance against learning expectations. Finally, the Government of Tanzania struggles with providing basic instructional inputs – teachers, teaching and learning materials, continued professional development – to the pre-primary school system. This study and its findings are important because they point to priority areas for system reform for the Government of Tanzania and other countries facing the challenge of producing learning at scale sustainably.

In an optimally efficient education system, all children enroll and complete the primary cycle in a one year to one grade ratio, acquiring basic reading, math and critical thinking skills along the way. Unfortunately, in many LMICs, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, many children entering primary school are met with limited instructional materials and under-equipped teachers (UNESCO, 2014), which can lead to education systems that are inefficient and characterized by low primary school completion rates, high grade-specific gross enrolment rates, and under-reported repetition rates, particularly in the early grades. This presentation reports the findings from a nationally representative study of over-enrollment and repetition in primary 1 in Uganda. The following research questions are addressed: 1) What is the enrolment pattern and the age distribution of pupils enrolled in primary 1, according to school records, teachers, and parents/guardians; 2) What is the repetition rate in primary 1, according to school records, teachers, and parents/guardians; 3) What is the relationship between repetition and age of enrolment in primary 1; 4) What is the enrolment rate in pre-primary education and its relationship with primary 1 repetition; 5) What are parents’/guardians’ attitudes and expectations about pre-primary education and repetition in primary 1. Data from enrollment, classroom, and administrative records on age and repetition were gathered from 120 schools. Caregivers and teachers of 1,440 randomly selected primary 1 students were also interviewed about student age, repetition in primary 1, and past enrollment in pre-primary education programs. Information from caregiver and teacher interviews was compared with data from enrollment, classroom, and school administrative records on the age of primary 1 students and repetition in primary 1. We also analyzed the relationship between participation in pre-primary education programs and student repetition in primary 1 through an odds-ratio logistic regression. Findings show that reports by caregivers and teachers of under-age and over-age pupil enrollment and repetition in Primary 1 were much higher than official reports. Additionally, pupils with no pre-primary education were 3.8 times more likely to repeat Primary 1, even controlling for gender, age at enrollment, and SES. Finally, almost 30 percent of caregivers enrolled their children in Primary 1 early, expecting repetition. Research and policy implications include the need to understand and challenge official repetition rates, to examine the effect of pre-primary on education system efficiency, and to investigate the effectiveness of automatic promotion policies.

What conditions make it possible to accomplish significant capacity development without running any workshops, without requiring any explicit project deliverables, and with only three short-term technical assistance trips over the course of 19 months? The All Children Reading–Cambodia Activity has been supporting the Education Quality Assurance Department (EQAD) of the education ministry in Cambodia since February 2017. An EQAD staffer, asked about the assistance, said, “The value of the support …is more than I can express… Through collaboration with [the project], EQAD has developed remarkably.” This case study examines how a different approach to providing technical assistance helped EQAD make those “remarkable” strides toward self-reliance.

This is Part 4 of a four-part comprehensive evaluation of the public textbook procurement system in Morocco. This final section of the Strengthening the Textbook Production Chain in Morocco series addresses the issue of how to ensure a long-term, sustainable system of textbook financing for all students in government schools. It also explores options available to the Ministry of Education of Morocco, based on examples from countries that have responded to the same challenges.

This is Part 2 of a four-part comprehensive evaluation of the public textbook procurement system in Morocco. It documents the Ministry of Education's textbook procurement system processes and presents the results of a survey of supplemental early reading materials in Arabic available in the Moroccan market. It also offers recommendations on how to increase the use of supplemental reading materials in the classroom.

This is Part 1 of a four-part comprehensive evaluation of the public textbook procurement system in Morocco. It offers recommendations on how to improve textbook quality, how to strengthen the procurement system --including budgeting and financing--, and developing a policy for digital textbooks.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Tara Weatherholt. A current challenge in the equitable access to quality pre-primary education for young children is the current lack of relevant and reliable data on pre-primary education to inform improvement of the education sector in developing country contexts. In 2015, the global Measuring Early Learning and Quality Outcomes (MELQO) initiative was formed by UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Bank, and the Brookings Institution to focus on facilitating feasible, accurate, and useful measurement of young pupils’ development at the start of primary school as well as the quality of pre-primary learning environments, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The first nationally representative school readiness study utilizing the MELQO suite of instruments was recently completed in Tanzania. This presentation will report on the quality of pre-primary education environments in both Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, as found through the national MELQO study conducted in early 2017, and how this may inform sector improvement.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. The Tusome national literacy program has been implemented in each of Kenya’s more than 22,000 public primary schools and 1500 low cost private schools in the slums since 2015. In addition to showing the comparisons between before and after Tusome’s implementation, this presentation will examine Tusome implementation data to reveal key characteristics of the scale-up framework that Tusome was designed to respond to. In particular, we share the extent of classroom utilization of the Tusome materials, the size of the classroom observational structures that Tusome tried to revitalize, and the responses of the community to the Tusome intervention. The findings suggest that Tusome had a substantial impact on literacy outcomes in both Kiswahili and English, in both Grade 1 and 2, in both public and low cost private settings, and in both urban and rural settings. This means that the program’s effect meant that nearly 1 million more children were able to be considered readers by the midterm intervention.