̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - International development

Sustained, purposeful investment key to ‘leaving no girl behind’, either in education or beyond

tdk25 — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 08:24:14 +0000

̽��ֱ��observations come from an evaluation of 14 projects across 10 countries in Africa and South Asia developed under the ‘Leave No Girl Behind’ (LNGB) initiative, launched in 2016. LNGB is part of the broader Girls’ Education Challenge, run by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

̽��ֱ��programme targets the most marginalised girls through structured interventions aimed at improving their academic skills and life chances. Collectively, these have aimed to reach 230,000 adolescent girls aged 10-19. ̽��ֱ��girls involved tend to come from very poor backgrounds. Many have married early, are teenage mothers, or have disabilities. All have either never attended school or dropped out early.

̽��ֱ��new analysis is the latest in a series of reports evaluating the impact of the UK’s recent, targeted support for the world’s least-advantaged girls in general. It was undertaken by a collaboration led by the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��research assessed the outcomes of the LNGB projects for more than 17,000 adolescent girls, complementing this with case studies from projects in Ghana, Kenya, and Nepal.

̽��ֱ��verdict is broadly positive. As well as enhancing basic literacy and numeracy skills, LNGB initiatives were found to have improved the girls’ life skills and well-being. Participants often displayed greater confidence and increased self-esteem. This enabled them to have more control over decisions relating to their education and work choices. Girls further reflected on how their future aspirations had changed for the better.

Despite this, the researchers highlight several ongoing challenges. Even after participating in an LNGB programme, many girls still encountered significant economic challenges and deep-rooted gender and social norms, which acted as barriers to their education and career development. With the Girls’ Education Challenge concluding in 2024, the report emphasises the need to engage a range of stakeholders in both LNGB projects and equivalent future initiatives, to identify ways to provide sustained support to tackle barriers that the most marginalised girls will continue to face into the future.

Dr Asma Zubairi, who was part of the REAL Centre’s evaluation team, said: “Leave No Girl Behind did a great job of providing more holistic support than many comparable interventions. Based on feedback from the girls themselves, however, it is clear that when the support stops, the same old problems resurface. There are some profound economic and social issues at play.”

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, said: “As we approach the end of the Girls’ Education Challenge, we need to consider what comes next. What Leave No Girl Behind has achieved is really impressive, but there are also lessons to learn. In particular, it is clear that we cannot just switch the support pipeline off for marginalised girls, and expect all those good results to be sustained.”

A hallmark of the LNGB projects was their holistic approach to supporting girls in both their education and livelihood journeys. Beyond improving academic skills, such as basic literacy and numeracy, they also charted a ‘pathway’ for each girl’s future: guiding them towards work opportunities, skills training, or back into formal schooling.

Girls and families were often given money or in-kind support to facilitate this. In Ghana, for instance, the families of girls resuming school received one year of financial aid; elsewhere, girls starting businesses were given start-up kits or funding.

Interviews with the girls, families and community members consistently suggested they emerged as confident, independent problem-solvers; while the life-skills training introduced them to topics such as contraception and tackling gender-based violence, of which some were previously unaware. One, speaking about the Aarambha project in Nepal, said it “taught us about contraceptive methods to not give birth to a child…. I did not know anything like that before [and] I learned it after coming to the community learning centre”.

̽��ֱ��report identifies a ‘virtuous’ circle for many girls who entered employment because they often contributed directly to their communities through their work. In Kenya, for example, some girls who trained in tailoring ended up supplying school uniforms to their local area. This increased respect from their families and peers, which added to their overall sense of empowerment and wellbeing.

Despite these positives, there is evidence that societal attitudes remain a formidable hurdle for many of the girls to participate in education. Social expectations also diverted some from their chosen paths following the programme. Older adolescent girls, for example, were seen as too old to return to education and project facilitators noted they potentially faced ridicule if they tried.

In addition, not all girls were able to pursue pathways that matched their preferences. About one-quarter of girls who pursued work-related pathways had originally expressed a preference for formal education but were dissuaded from pursuing it. Moreover, many of the girls following a work-related pathway were pushed towards a limited list of occupations deemed ‘appropriate’ for women, such as tailoring and hairdressing.

̽��ֱ��report cites the case of Ayaan, a 20-year-old mother from Kenya who had originally dropped out of primary school. After joining an LNGB programme, Ayaan wanted to study chemistry, but was considered too old for formal education. She then opted to train as an electrician, only for her husband to reject this as “a man’s vocation”: “They [project in Kenya] told us that only the young kids have the option to go back to school….and my husband refused me to do electrician because he said that it is for men.” Ayaan ended up opening a business selling nuts, charcoal and clothing: a success on paper, but not when measured against her own dreams.

̽��ֱ��evaluation identifies other structural problems. Not all employers, for example, recognised the qualification girls received after graduating from the LNGB interventions, leaving some feeling “underappreciated and stuck with a useless certificate,” according to one interviewee involved in the implementation of an LNGB project in Zimbabwe.

Despite having initial financial backing, girls and families often struggled to afford school or sustain business ventures once the funding ended. In Kenya, about 20% of graduates from the training pathway remained jobless; 39% on the entrepreneurship pathway started businesses that subsequently failed. Societal prejudices sometimes intersected with this: in Kenya there were accounts of men destroying their wives’ sewing machines to stop them from working.

̽��ֱ��report emphasises that future projects will need to collaborate closely with a wide range of stakeholders from inception. These are likely to include governments and NGOs. Such partnerships, the researchers argue, enhance the prospects of girls receiving ongoing, cross-sector support, which is essential for prolonged success.

A host of other recommendations include ensuring that future projects are of sufficient length to enable girls to master the skills they are being taught (which was not consistently true of the LNGB interventions); more comprehensive career guidance to prevent girls being limited to the same handful of occupations; and ties with microfinance to help those who start their own businesses.

“Well-structured interventions like the LNGB projects naturally draw in other entities to help marginalised girls,” Rose said. “They could do so even more strategically. A single education aid project cannot reverse societal or economic constraints by itself, but it can lay the groundwork for a broader approach sustained by others, long after the original project comes to an end.”

A UK-funded programme to support out-of-school girls in low-income countries has significantly enhanced their learning, confidence, opportunities and prospects, a new report says. However, sustained, strategic and targeted investment will be needed to preserve these gains.

It is clear that we cannot just switch the support pipeline off for marginalised girls, and expect all those good results to be sustained

Pauline Rose

VSO Nepal

Young girl in Nepal

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Richest nations drift further away from 10% aid goal for pre-primary education

tdk25 — Wed, 17 May 2023 09:03:28 +0000

International aid for pre-primary education has fallen further behind an agreed 10% spending target since the COVID-19 outbreak, according to new research.

̽��ֱ��report, compiled by academics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge for the global children’s charity, Theirworld, highlights “continued, chronic” underfunding of pre-primary education in many of the world’s poorest nations, after years of slow progress and pandemic-related cuts.

Early childhood education is widely understood to be essential to children’s successful cognitive and social development and to breaking cycles of poverty in poorer countries. In 2017, Cambridge research for Theirworld resulted in UNICEF formally recommending that 10% of education aid should be allocated to pre-primary education. Last year 147 United Nations member states signed a declaration agreeing to the target.

According to the new report’s findings, aid spending is falling far short of this goal and any progress towards the target ground to a halt following the COVID-19 outbreak. ̽��ֱ��most recent figures, from 2021, indicate that the proportion of education aid spent on pre-primary education internationally during the pandemic dropped by approximately (US)$19.7 million: from 1.2% to 1.1%.

̽��ֱ��report identifies several reasons for the decline, notably spending cuts by the World Bank’s International Development Association, EU Institutions, and by the governments of wealthy nations, such as the UK.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education said: “Hundreds of millions of children around the world are missing out on high-quality pre-primary education despite clear evidence that prioritising this will improve their life chances. ̽��ֱ��overall trend is very worrying.”

“Although some progress has been made towards the 10% target, it started from a very low base. Other education levels are still being prioritised amid a general decline in aid spending. International commitments to pre-primary education are good, but we need concrete action.”

̽��ֱ��United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals include the ambition to provide all children with proper childcare and pre-primary education. Over the past seven years, Theirworld and the REAL Centre have systematically monitored aid spending, tracking progress towards this goal.

̽��ֱ��new report was compiled using the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s creditor report system, which gathers information about the aid contributions of both individual countries and international agencies such as UNICEF and the World Bank.

It shows that over the past two decades, the proportion of education aid spending that goes to pre-primary education has never exceeded 1.2%. Between 2020 and 2021, spending on the sector dropped from $209 million to $189.3 million: a decrease of 9.4%, compared with a 6.9% fall in education aid overall and a 0.9% decline in total aid spending. In 2021, aid spending on post-secondary education – the vast majority of which never leaves donor countries – was 27 times higher than that spent on pre-primary, despite widespread acknowledgement of the need to invest in the early years.

̽��ֱ��report nevertheless also shows that the 10% target is attainable. UNICEF, which has consistently prioritised pre-primary education, spent 30% of its education aid budget on the sector in 2021. Italy increased spending from $2.6 million to $38 million. ̽��ֱ��majority of this was allocated to the ‘National Strategy on Human Resource Development’ which focuses on supporting the Jordanian government in strengthening its education system.

̽��ֱ��research shows that pre-primary aid is highly concentrated from a few donors, leaving early childhood development in poorer countries particularly vulnerable to sudden fluctuations in those donors’ spending.

Much of the pandemic-induced drop in spending, for instance, occurred because the World Bank cut its investment in pre-primary education from $122.8 million to $70.7 million. Other donors, such as Canada, EU Institutions, France, Norway and the UK, also reduced spending in this area. In 2021, eight of the top 35 education donors allocated no funds to pre-primary education at all.

̽��ֱ��UK’s contribution was lacklustre for the world’s sixth largest economy, due in part to the Government’s controversial decision to reduce overall aid spending from the UN-recommend target of 0.7% of Gross National Income to 0.5%. Between 2020 and 2021, its education aid spending dropped from $703.67 million to $584.95 million. Aid to pre-primary was particularly badly hit, falling from an already low $5.6 million in 2020 to just $1.8 million in 2021, equivalent to a mere 0.3% of its reduced education aid budget.

̽��ֱ��report also shows that pre-primary education spending tends to be focused on lower-middle income countries rather than the very poorest nations. In 2021, just 15% of aid in this area went to countries classified as “low income”, while 52.7% was allocated to lower-middle income countries.

As a result, some of the world’s least-advantaged children have little prospect of receiving pre-primary support. Eritrea and Sudan, for example, received no pre-primary education aid in 2021. In many other poorer countries – such as the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger and Syria – the amount of aid per primary school-aged child was less than $5.

Rose said the finding pointed to the need for a model of “progressive universalism”, where those most in need receive a greater proportion of aid spending. “ ̽��ֱ��biggest gaps are in the poorest countries, and particularly among the very poorest and least advantaged,” she said. “Increasing spending on pre-primary alone will not be enough. We also have to make sure those in greatest need are prioritised.”

̽��ֱ��full report will be available on the Theirworld website.

New research shows proportion of international education aid for early childhood learning fell to just 1.1% post-pandemic, far short of an agreed 10% target.

̽��ֱ��biggest gaps are in the poorest countries, and particularly among the very poorest and least advantaged

Pauline Rose

Ahmed Akacha

Children in Idlib Governorate, Syria: one of the countries most seriously affected by the underfunding of pre-primary education

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Students in Rwanda confound pandemic predictions and head back to school

tdk25 — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 08:08:35 +0000

Ever since the pandemic forced schools around the world to close, analysts, academics and teachers have been warning that many students in poorer countries might not return. According to some estimates, more than 10 million school-age students are at risk of dropping out worldwide. There have been particular concerns about marginalised groups such as the very poorest children and girls.

̽��ֱ��new study, which used enrolment data from 358 Rwandan secondary schools, collected both before and after the closures, found that rather than undergoing a sharp fall, student numbers actually rose when schools reopened. ̽��ֱ��cause appears to have been a combination of existing students returning, and the enrolment of other pupils who were out of school before the pandemic began.

Researchers say that this may represent an emerging trend, because as-yet unpublished results from other sub-Saharan countries, such as Ethiopia and Malawi, similarly show no steep fall in numbers.

Despite this, a more gradual, long-term decline in the numbers of children in school may be underway. ̽��ֱ��research tracked enrolment past the point where schools reopened in Rwanda, and up to May 2021. By that stage, some students did appear to be dropping out of the system. This was particularly true of those from marginalised groups.

̽��ֱ��research was undertaken by a team from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the East African research and data collection firm, Laterite, and was carried out for the Mastercard Foundation’s Leaders in Teaching Initiative.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Given the seriousness of the impact of COVID-19, I wouldn’t have been surprised if enrolment rates had halved when schools reopened. We are still developing a comprehensive picture of the situation across Sub-Saharan Africa, but the impact on drop-outs appears far less extreme than initially feared.”

“It is important we continue to monitor the situation. There was clearly real enthusiasm for schools to reopen at first, but there are now signs that some children may potentially be disappearing from the system.”

Schools in Rwanda closed in March 2020 and did not reopen until November, when they did so on a staggered basis. ̽��ֱ��research collected aggregate enrolment data from before the pandemic, in February 2020, and a year later, in February 2021.

This showed that after schools reopened, enrolment rates rose in the Secondary 1 and Secondary 4 year groups: natural entry points into the Rwandan system because they mark the start of lower and upper secondary school respectively. Enrolment rose by 7% at the Secondary 1 level, and 11% at Secondary 4, in February 2021. Numbers remained steady in the other year groups.

Crucially, the Rwanda Basic Education Board decided to make all students return to the year group that they were previously in when schools reopened. This means that the Secondary 1 and 4 year groups comprised the same cohorts across 2020 and 2021. ̽��ֱ��rise in numbers was therefore almost certainly due to students who had previously dropped out re-joining their cohort in February 2021.

̽��ֱ��study also gathered both enrolment and assessment data from a sample of 2,800 students in the Secondary 3 year group, which it followed up to May 2021.

By that stage, researchers found, some students had started to drop out. About 89% of the entire sample group were still in school by May 2021, but the figure was lower among girls, and particularly among students who were over the ‘expected’ cohort age because they had been kept back an additional year or more. ̽��ֱ��overage group were also disproportionately likely to come from less-wealthy backgrounds.

“Keeping track of these children is really important,” Mico Rudasingwa, Research Associate at Laterite said. “By the time they reach adolescence, those from the poorest backgrounds in particular are in danger of dropping out early to support with income generating activities for the household.”

̽��ֱ��sample group of students also took a learning assessment, in the form of a numeracy test, in February 2020, and again in May 2021 – two terms after their return to school. ̽��ֱ��results were measured using a ‘latent ability score’ – given as a figure between 0 and 1 – which takes into account not only how many questions they got right, but how difficult those questions were. ̽��ֱ��average score rose from 0.47 in the first test to 0.52 in the second. Over 90% of the schools in the sample group recorded an average improvement in numeracy scores.

Although positive, these results should be treated with caution, as there is no counterfactual evidence available about how much their test results might have improved had the school closures never occurred. ̽��ֱ��learning levels of some groups also improved more than others. Boys generally outperformed girls by about 0.02 points on the latent ability scale, while overage students again lagged behind their peers, by about 0.03 points.

̽��ֱ��study also collected teacher retention data by tracking 1,700 teachers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects before and after the closures. Around 94% of STEM teachers returned to their classes in early 2021, and almost half the schools surveyed saw an overall increase in STEM teachers through new recruitment. ̽��ֱ��report describes this low turnover rate as ‘encouraging’.

̽��ֱ��full report is available on the REAL Centre website.

New data from Rwanda, and some of the first published on how COVID-19 has impacted school attendance in the Global South, suggest that a widely-predicted spike in drop-out rates has “not materialised”.

We are still developing a comprehensive picture of the situation across Sub-Saharan Africa, but the impact on drop-outs appears far less extreme than initially feared

Pauline Rose

Jannik Skorna via Unsplash

Schoolchildren in Rwanda

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Poorly conceived payment-on-results funding threatens to undermine education aid

tdk25 — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 11:38:04 +0000

A payment on results approach to delivering education aid, which is championed by international institutions including the World Bank, is in danger of backfiring in some of the countries it aims to help, researchers believe.

̽��ֱ��concerns are raised in a new study, by academics at the Universities of Cambridge and Addis Ababa, which examines results-based financing in education and heavily critiques one such programme in Ethiopia. It urges donors not to treat the approach as a “magic bullet” for poorer countries, echoing other studies which have flagged similar doubts.

Results-based financing is a funding model that has been widely adopted by Western governments and institutions to provide education aid to lower-income countries. Rather than handing out grants up front, the approach requires recipient governments to meet a set of target conditions which are agreed with donors in advance. ̽��ֱ��money is released as these conditions are met.

̽��ֱ��targets vary, but typically involve improvements to attainment and enrolment in schools. According to the World Bank, results-based financing “could have a substantial impact in terms of achieving results that matter” in support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

̽��ֱ��new study examined the ‘Programme for Results’ (PforR) scheme: a results-based financing package underpinning the latest phase of the Ethiopian government’s education reforms. This draws on a pooled fund, supported by a consortium of donors led by the World Bank.

Although the research is broadly supportive of the principle of linking funding to results, it found that several aspects of the financing project were unfit for purpose from the start. Many of the targets set through PforR, for example, fell short of those of the education reforms themselves. ̽��ֱ��researchers also argue that key groups of children, such as those with disabilities, were overlooked in the target-setting; inadequate systems were put in place to measure results, and some local authorities were unaware of the new system months after it began.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��shortcomings we identified suggest that the potential for this results-based financing programme to improve education and learning is limited. In the worst-case scenario, it could end up undermining the very reforms it is meant to support.”

̽��ֱ��study is not the first to question how results-based financing packages are being structured and implemented. Similar problems have been highlighted in several previous assessments, including an evaluation of a pilot programme in Ethiopia in 2015, and an assessment of funding programmes in Mozambique, Nepal and Tanzania, in 2021.

̽��ֱ��PforR initiative began in 2018 and is expected to run until 2023. Researchers examined the original programme appraisal document, and interviewed 72 of the donors and government officials responsible for its creation and delivery.

They found that many targets set through the scheme failed to match the ambition of the Ethiopian government’s reforms. Just 40% were linked to improving academic results, which is the principal aim of the government’s initiative. ̽��ֱ��PforR plan also specified that attainment should be measured at 2,000 schools which had been earmarked as requiring improvement. ̽��ֱ��bar set for the attainment targets that would unlock further funding was therefore often low; one donor described them as “a bit soft”.

While some of these targets took gender parity into account, researchers found that they overlooked other equity issues, such as how far education reforms were supporting marginalised groups including children with disabilities and those from the poorest backgrounds.

In the few cases where the PforR plan did specify targets for these groups, they were often widely considered to be inadequate. For example, education officials told the researchers that they had raised concerns at the plan’s draft stage about a target for expanding the number of Inclusive Education Resource Centres in Ethiopia. ̽��ֱ��researchers calculate that this target, if achieved, would affect just 10% of schools and fail to reach the majority of children with disabilities. ̽��ֱ��feedback raising this concern was never taken into account.

̽��ֱ��paper criticises what appears to be a back-to-front approach to data-gathering. Several interviewees observed that systems were not in place to measure whether the PforR targets were being met before the programme started. Instead, improving data collection was itself set as a goal. In some cases, the study finds, this may mean that inaccurate information produced under the old, faulty system is likely to be contradicted mid-programme, creating the false impression that some targets are being missed.

̽��ֱ��analysis also found a “significant gap in knowledge” about the programme’s introduction among regional and woreda (district) officials in the local education authorities charged with delivering results.

Months after it commenced, one official told researchers that he had “no clear understanding” of what ‘Programme for Results’ meant or involved. Another said that they had only heard “a rumour that the school grant is to be changed”. “These interviews were carried out during the first year of the implementation,” co-author, Dr Belay Hagos from Addis Ababa ̽��ֱ��, said. “We didn’t expect everyone to have a comprehensive knowledge of what it involved, but we did expect they would at least be aware of it.”

̽��ֱ��authors suggest that these findings add further weight to existing evidence that some results-based financing packages are being implemented without adequate, contextualised planning, and without necessary preconditions – such as data-gathering measures – in place.

Rose added that there were doubts about how more recent developments in Ethiopia – notably the double shock of COVID-19 and conflict – would affect the arrangements. “Some of the education reforms to which the funding is tied have inevitably ground to a halt since 2018,” she said. “It is not entirely clear who will be responsible when results aren’t achieved in this context, and what sort of funding the government might eventually receive.”

̽��ֱ��research is published in Third World Quarterly.

Analysis of a results-based-financing programme for education aid in Ethiopia finds that multiple aspects of the arrangement were unfit for purpose from the start and could undermine education reforms.

Some of the education reforms to which the funding is tied have inevitably ground to a halt since 2018

Pauline Rose

Taylor Wilcox

Children leaving school in Ale, Ethiopia

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Poor children are being ‘failed by the system’ on road to higher education in lower-income countries

tdk25 — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 23:00:59 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, which used data from around 3,500 young people in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam, shows that promising but poorer students ‘fall away’ during their school years, as challenges associated with their socio-economic circumstances gradually erode their potential. Among children who showed similar levels of ability aged 8, for example, the wealthiest were often over 30 percentage points more likely than the least-wealthy to enter all forms of tertiary education: including university, technical colleges, and teacher training.

Even when they focused only on students who complete secondary school with comparable levels of learning, the researchers found that those from wealthier backgrounds were still more likely to progress to higher education. They describe their findings, reported in the British Education Research Journal, as indicative of the ‘protective effect’ of wealth in relation to academic advantage.

̽��ֱ��study was undertaken by the Research in Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education. Dr Sonia Ilie, its lead author, said: “In many lower-income countries, low socio-economic status is a continual barrier to young people’s attainment. What is clear is that these inequalities in higher education access have nothing to do with ability: this is about systems which are consistently failing poorer children.”

̽��ֱ��data used in the research was from Young Lives, an international childhood poverty study which is tracking two cohorts of young people from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers focused on the group born in 1994/5. Young Lives includes information about education and attainment at ages 8, 12, 15, 19 and 22, and importantly therefore includes the many young people in lower-income countries who may enter higher education after age 19.

̽��ֱ��researchers started by comparing basic entry rates into higher education among the poorest 25% and wealthiest 25% of participants. ̽��ֱ��percentage point gap between these quartiles was 45 in both India and Peru, 41 in Vietnam, and 17 in Ethiopia.

They then analysed higher education progression rates among increasingly comparable groups of students. First, they focused on those with similar demographic characteristics (such as gender, ethnicity, and whether they lived in urban or rural settings). They then progressively added more information about their education to examine students who were both in school, and achieving certain attainment levels, aged 8, 12 and 15.

̽��ֱ��gap between the poorest and richest students’ likelihood of enrolling in higher education narrowed steadily as each level of information was factored in. Given the disparity in the ‘raw’ wealth gap, this indicates that children from poor backgrounds often fail to progress because they drop out, or under-achieve, throughout primary and secondary school. It also suggests that factors such as a person’s gender interact with their socio-economic status to influence their likelihood of progressing to higher education.

Crucially, however, a gap still existed between rich and poor even among students who finished secondary school with comparable levels of learning. ̽��ֱ��size of the remaining gap reflected the complexities of each country’s higher education systems, but showed that at the same level of schooling and learning, wealth played this protective effect.

̽��ֱ��study also analysed the progress of ‘high-promise’ children. ̽��ֱ��researchers identified all children who had achieved a certain level of literacy at age 8, and then used numeracy and maths scores to compare the educational trajectories of the richest and poorest among this group.

Overall, the attainment gap between high-promise children from the top and bottom wealth quartiles widened during school, even though their test scores were similar at age 8. Ultimately, many more high-promise children from the richest quartile entered higher education compared with the poorest: the percentage point gap between the two groups was 39 in Peru, 32 in India and Vietnam, and 15 in Ethiopia.

“Even among children who do well to begin with, poverty clearly becomes an obstacle to progression,” Ilie said. “ ̽��ֱ��reverse also applies: if they are wealthy, even children with initially lower levels of learning catch up with their poorest peers. This is what we mean by the protective effect of wealth.”

̽��ֱ��study says that the first priority in addressing the higher education wealth gap should be targeted investment in primary education for the very poorest. This is already an emerging policy focus in many lower-income countries, where disadvantaged children, even if they go to school, often have poor learning outcomes. ̽��ֱ��reasons for this, documented in several other studies, include limited educational resources and support at home, and practical difficulties with school attendance.

̽��ֱ��findings also indicate, however, that targeted support should continue during secondary education, where wealth-related barriers persist. In addition, the residual wealth gap even among those who finish secondary school highlights a need for initiatives that will reduce the cost of higher education for disadvantaged students. ̽��ֱ��study suggests that means-tested grants may be one viable solution, but further evidence is required. It also warns that at present, taxation-based funding for higher education will essentially ‘subsidise a socio-economic elite’, while tuition fees will further prohibit access for the poorest.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, said: “If we want to equalise opportunities at the point of entry into higher education, we have to intervene early, when the wealth gaps emerge. This study shows that targeted and sustained interventions and funding are needed for the poorest students not only in their earliest years, but throughout their educational careers.”

A generation of talented but disadvantaged children are being denied access to higher education because academic success in lower- and middle-income countries is continually ‘protected by wealth’, a study has found.

These inequalities in higher education access have nothing to do with ability: this is about systems which are consistently failing poorer children

Sonia Ilie

Gift HAbeshaw via Unsplash

Student graduating in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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School closures may have wiped out a year of academic progress for pupils in Global South, study warns

tdk25 — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:02:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, by academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and RTI International, attempts to quantify the scale of learning loss that children from poor and marginalised communities in the Global South may have experienced, and the extent to which home support and access to learning resources could ameliorate it.

While it is known that the education of these children has suffered disproportionately during the pandemic, it is much harder to measure exactly how much their academic progress has been impeded while schools have been closed.

̽��ֱ��researchers used data from Ghana to model the likely impact of closures for children in remote and deprived parts of that country. They found that on average, 66% of the learning gains made in foundational numeracy during the academic year are lost during three months out of school. ̽��ֱ��outcome is, however, far worse for children without adequate home learning resources or support.

̽��ֱ��authors suggest these findings provide a glimpse of a much wider pattern of learning loss that is being experienced by millions of disadvantaged children around the world.

Co-author Ricardo Sabates, from the REAL Centre in the ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Education, said: “Despite teachers’ best efforts, we know school closures have held up, or reversed, the progress of millions of children. This study is one approach to estimate how much learning could have been lost, and how much worse this may have been for children from disadvantaged settings.”

“These figures represent an estimate of learning loss for children who spent 3 to 4 months out of school. We expect that as schools remained closed for longer, losses could be higher. We also acknowledge the important support that many families and communities provided with supplementary learning, which may have in turn limited the potential loss overall.”

̽��ֱ��study built on earlier research that highlighted the significant learning losses that occur when certain groups of children in developing countries move from one academic year to the next, particularly those who change language of instruction, and disadvantaged girls.

̽��ֱ��researchers used data charting the progress of more than 1,100 students on Ghana’s Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme between 2016 and 2018. This programme supports children aged eight to 14 who would not normally attend school, providing them with education in their own language and at flexible times. On completion, students are encouraged to enrol at a local government school, but the start of that school year occurs after a three-month gap, during which they receive no education.

̽��ֱ��researchers compared participants’ scores in foundational maths tests at four stages: when they started the CBE, when they finished, when they joined a government school, and after their first year in government school. They also accessed data about how much home learning support the students had – for example, whether they had books at home, or could seek help from an adult when struggling with homework.

During the CBE programme, the students’ test scores improved, on average, by 27 percentage points. When they were tested again after the three-month gap, however, their scores had reduced by an average of 18 percentage points. Two-thirds of the gains these students had made during the previous academic year were therefore lost while they were out of school. ̽��ֱ��researchers argue that this is an upper estimate of the expected scale of loss during an equivalent period of school closures due to COVID-19. Fortunately, during the pandemic community efforts to enhance learning may have mitigated this effect for some children.

In spite of this, they also found that the basic learning loss was compounded among children who lacked support to study at home. For example:

Children without access to reading and learning resources at home (such as books) experienced a learning loss above 80%.
Children who said that they never asked adults in their household for help experienced a learning loss of around 85%.

Encouragingly, the study showed that in the first year of formal education, students not only recouped their learning loss, but improved, while the attainment gap between more and less advantaged students narrowed.

In many countries, however, it is becoming clear that many disadvantaged students – especially marginalised groups such as disabled children and many girls – are not returning to school. Therefore, the researchers suggest supporting access to diverse forms of education for students from less-advantaged backgrounds. There is evidence to show that community-based programmes, for example, can enhance a range of learning skills for these children. “Learning at home and in communities has to be reimagined if rapid gains are to be achieved as we continue to face the COVID-19 situation,” the authors say.

̽��ֱ��pattern of learning loss charted in Ghana may also apply far beyond the Global South. “This is an international challenge,” said co-author Emma Carter, also from the REAL Centre. “In Europe and the US, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds will similarly be experiencing severe learning loss. ̽��ֱ��levels of attainment may differ between countries, but it is highly likely that the pattern of loss remains.”

̽��ֱ��evaluation data used in the study was commissioned and funded by FCDO Ghana. ̽��ֱ��research is published in the International Journal of Educational Development.

As much as a year’s worth of past academic progress made by disadvantaged children in the Global South may have been wiped out by school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have calculated.

Despite teachers’ best efforts, we know school closures have held up, or reversed, the progress of millions of children

Ricardo Sabates

Bill Wegener

School in Kampala, Uganda

Yes

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‘Left behind’ adolescent women must be prioritised within sustainable development agenda - report

tdk25 — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 11:37:38 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge report, which was commissioned by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, argues that there is an urgent need to do more to support marginalised, adolescent women in low and middle-income countries; many of whom leave education early and then face an ongoing struggle to build secure livelihoods.

Amid extensive evidence which highlights the difficulties these women face, it estimates that almost a third of adolescent women in many such countries are not in education, training, or work.

‘Adolescents’ (technically people aged 10 to 19) comprise about one sixth of the world’s population. Women in this age group are some of the most vulnerable people in the world. ̽��ֱ��report argues that unless more is done to support them, it is unlikely that the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals – which include ending poverty, ensuring inclusive education, and empowering women and girls – will be met.

In particular, the document highlights the need for more concerted efforts to be made to prevent gender discrimination in labour markets, strengthen social safety nets for women, and provide both formal education and continued training for the huge numbers of adolescent women who, it says, ‘have missed out on acquiring relevant skills to enhance their livelihood opportunities.’

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Marginalised adolescent girls are those who experience extreme poverty, live in rural areas, have disabilities, are affected by conflict, or belong to disadvantaged groups. We need to prioritise these young women both in education and as they transition into work. Millions are being left behind by a range of interlocking problems, and strong, sustained political leadership is needed to turn that around.”

̽��ֱ��Government has identified girls’ education as a key focus of the UK’s presidency of the G7 group of industrial countries this year, and gender equality will be mainstreamed across the different ministerial tracks. ̽��ֱ��new report raises gender inequality – both in education and employment – as major areas of concern for the international community.

̽��ֱ��report further stresses that adolescence is a make-or-break time for many girls in low- and lower-middle-income countries and should therefore be a focal point of international efforts. During this period, many young women leave education early, either to work, or because they are expected to marry and start a family. Often, they do so without having acquired basic literacy or numeracy. In addition, very few have the transferable skills or training that they need to succeed in the world of work.

̽��ֱ��document draws on more than 150 sources to evidence both the scale of the problem and the nature of the barriers that marginalised adolescent girls face. For many, a quality education remains a far-off dream. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, fewer than one in 10 girls from poor households in rural areas complete lower secondary education.

Many also struggle to find secure employment. Data from 30 low- and middle-income countries suggests that 31% of young women are not in education, employment or training, compared with 16% of boys. Those who do find jobs frequently work for low wages, in unsafe settings and without any sort of social safety net.

One of the main reasons for this, the report says, is a lack of access to appropriate skills development and training. For example, one in three unemployed adolescent girls in the Asia-Pacific region, and one in five in sub-Saharan Africa, report that the entry requirements for their preferred career path exceed their education and training.

Compounding these problems, gender discrimination in both labour markets and wider society is an accepted norm in many countries. Among many other examples, this manifests itself in inheritance laws which transfer land and property to sons but not daughters; the tendency to force girls who struggle to find work into early marriage and childbearing; and widespread gender-related violence. One study in Nigeria, cited in the report, found that two-thirds of young female apprentices had experienced physical violence – and 39% said that their employer was the most recent perpetrator.

While the research also identifies many successful individual programmes around the world that address some of these issues, it stresses the need for policy-makers internationally to prioritise adolescent girls in larger-scale, systemic reforms.

It makes numerous recommendations about how that can be done, including:

Implementing measures and laws that challenge gender discrimination in education, labour markets and wider society.
Curriculum reforms to develop women’s transferrable skills in school, supported by skills development programmes outside the education system.
Catch-up programmes for those who have missed out on a basic education.
Strengthening social safety nets, which have been shown to benefit women in particular.
Providing sexual and reproductive health services and information for all adolescent girls.
Providing counselling and rehabilitation services that offer practical support to adolescent girls who have been forced into unsafe work settings.

̽��ֱ��report highlights the particular role that female political leaders and parliamentarians can play in driving forward a more integrated agenda for marginalised young women, and in challenging patriarchal norms that hold back gender equality.

It also warns that many of the trends documented are currently at risk of becoming worse as a result of COVID-19. “ ̽��ֱ��best way that Governments can signal their commitment to this problem is by putting women and girls at the forefront of COVID-19 recovery efforts and ambitions to build back better,” Rose said. “It is vital that this includes a strong focus on adolescent girls.”

̽��ֱ��needs of millions of overlooked, ‘left behind’ adolescent women must become a more significant priority within international efforts to end poverty by 2030, a UK Government-commissioned report is urging.

We need to prioritise these young women both in education and as they transition into work

Pauline Rose

Szappi

Young African women and girls carrying water in a rural area

Yes

In Ethiopia, schools still lack basic means to contain COVID-19, as pupils return after months of interrupted learning

tdk25 — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 11:24:41 +0000

̽��ֱ��two new research and policy reports, compiled by academics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge in collaboration with partners in Ethiopia, draw attention to the combined educational and practical challenges facing the country’s schools as pupils return. ̽��ֱ��authors suggest that these converging problems, while more severe than those affecting schools in wealthy countries such as the UK, are typical of those confronting millions of parents and teachers across sub-Saharan Africa as the pandemic continues to exact a far less-visible toll on their lives and communities.

̽��ֱ��findings are based on telephone interviews with more than 900 teachers and caregivers which were carried out in August. Schools in Ethiopia are currently reopening on a staggered basis for the first time since March, with priority given to schools in rural areas. Since the study was completed, many of the issues it documents will have been compounded by the crisis in Tigray.

Overall, the researchers found that, despite significant efforts by the Ethiopian government to support remote learning, many pupils are likely to have had little or no education during the closure period. Disadvantaged groups – such as poorer children, those in remote areas, and girls – are likely to need specific attention having missed out the most.

But while it is therefore vital that schools reopen, the reports also highlight the huge challenges of making schools COVID-safe at a time when access to a vaccine is still, in all likelihood, months away for many teachers and pupils. They point to cases where schools lack soap and running water, for example, and to concerns about the practicalities of social-distancing in overcrowded classrooms.

̽��ֱ��surveys were undertaken by members of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, in partnership with colleagues at Addis Ababa ̽��ֱ�� and the Ethiopian Policy Studies Institute, as part of the RISE Ethiopia and Early Learning Partnership projects.

School closures are widely understood to have deepened a long-term ‘learning crisis’ in low- and middle-income countries in which many of the least-advantaged children already struggle to attain basic levels of literacy and numeracy. Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, said: “These reports describe the situation in Ethiopia, but highlight interlocking problems that apply much more widely.”

“In many parts of the world, COVID-19 has not just made it harder to keep children learning: it also makes it harder to keep them in school. There are multiple constraints affecting low- and middle-income countries which mean that the very poorest and most marginalised children are even greater risk of dropping out of the system altogether than they already were.”

Professor Tassew Woldehanna, President at Addis Ababa ̽��ֱ��, said: “With schools reopening it is essential that policy-makers have access to the sort of clear, robust evidence presented here. It is critical to targeting those pupils who need the most support, and limiting the effects of lost learning for millions of children.”

̽��ֱ��team interviewed 443 primary school teachers and principals and 480 parents and caregivers. They also co-ordinated with surveys by the Oxford-based Young Lives programme, who spoke to a further 64 principals.

Their results show that while many teachers have been quick to adapt to remote teaching and learning, students’ access to education has clearly been uneven. In some rural regions, for example, none of the teachers interviewed had internet access and only around half of households had electricity. ̽��ֱ��researchers estimate that around two-thirds of the teachers they surveyed had reached fewer than half of their students during the closures.

̽��ֱ��uneven provision that this implies is likely to have affected disadvantaged groups, such as poorer children, those in rural areas, and girls (whose education is often considered lower-priority than that of boys), most severely. Many teachers fear that, because these groups’ parents often have low literacy, low regard for education, and recruit their children to support the generation of family income; such children are especially at risk of dropping out of school, or of never returning.

̽��ֱ��research also draws attention to COVID-19’s impact on pre-primary education in Ethiopia: a sector which has been neglected by many governments during the pandemic. Only 53% of parents or caregivers with young children had been able to engage in learning activities with pre-primary children during school closures. Just 10% reported any contact with pre-primary teachers.

At the same time, however, the reports highlight significant infrastructure and resource challenges within schools themselves. 38% of parents said that their children’s schools were only ‘somewhat equipped’ with handwashing facilities; 22% said that they were ‘not equipped at all’. About 15% said that they did not have facemasks for their children to wear at school, and 46% could not provide their children with hand sanitiser. A majority of teachers and principals, especially those in rural areas, expressed similar concerns about both hygiene, and a lack of adequate classroom space to maintain social distancing.

̽��ֱ��researchers stress that despite the efforts made by the government so far, ongoing interventions will therefore be needed to help all children benefit as schools reopen. Their main recommendations are:

A targeted, national campaign by government, school management committees and local authorities to keep children in school.
Extra support (and, if viable, time in school) for students who need to recover lost learning.
̽��ֱ��construction of new classrooms or sheltered areas where possible, as well as the targeted supply of extra hygiene resources such as sanitisers, facemasks and handwashing facilities to those most in need.
Additional investment in resources and strategies to support remote learning, particularly in the context of further possible outbreaks in schools before the effective delivery of a vaccine.

Both reports are available from the REAL Centre website.

Many schools in Ethiopia lack the hygiene facilities and infrastructure to control COVID-19 effectively, as they reopen for the first time after months of disrupted learning, new research indicates.

COVID-19 has not just made it harder to keep children learning: it also makes it harder to keep them in school

Pauline Rose

UNICEF Ethiopia

An empty classroom in Haro Huba school, in Oromia region, central Ethiopia.

Yes

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