The impact of remedial education in complex emergencies: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Kakuma, Kenya

• In Event: Designing, implementing, and learning from mixed-methods randomized controlled trials in humanitarian contexts: lessons from remedial education in Dadaab and Kakuma
  In Formal Panel Session: Designing, implementing, and learning from mixed-methods randomized controlled trials in humanitarian contexts: lessons from remedial education in Dadaab and Kakuma.

Proposal

This presentation will focus on the midterm results of an impact evaluation of World University Services Canada’s (WUSC) Equity in Education in Refugee Camps in Kenya (EERCK) program. Discussion of this study, along with the qualitative study, can contribute to development practitioners’ understanding of running a rigorous long-term evaluation in a refugee setting. The study also contributes to furthering the discussion around the roadmap for scaling promising interventions in education.

We designed a rigorous two-part study to evaluate the impact of the EERCK program on cognitive and noncognitive skills for seventh- and eighth-grade girls in the 2017 and the 2018 cohorts. In Kakuma, we are using a randomization-by-oversubscription methodology in which we randomly assigned half of 1,300 program-eligible girls to receive the program and half to a control group that will not receive the program. In Dadaab, we are using a regression discontinuity design to determine the impact of the program: We compare the outcomes from 496 girls who were above the cutoff for admittance into the program to 179 comparison girls who were just below the cutoff for admittance. In both components, we are measuring the impact of the program on school attendance, achievement, and retention.

Midterm results show high levels of remedial education attendance among program participants. The impact evaluation findings reveal a small substitution away from primary education to remedial education in Kakuma and evidence for small increases in attendance in primary education in Dadaab.

The midterm results do not show statistically significant impacts of WUSC’s remedial education program on learning outcomes, but the point estimates are all positive and in line with meta-analyses synthesizing previous evaluations of remedial education programs in low- and middle-income countries.

Exploratory evidence suggests that WUSC’s remedial education program could have positive and statistically significant effects on learning outcomes for girls in food-secure households. We find large and positive effects of the remedial education program for girls in food-secure households, but more research is needed to provide definitive evidence on this heterogeneous effect.

Authors

• Andrew Brudevold-Newman, American Institutes for Research

• Thomas J. De Hoop, American Institutes for Research

• Timothy Mwongera Kinoti, World University Service of Canada (WUSC)

• Darius Getanda Isaboke, World University Service of Canada (WUSC)

• Hannah Reeves Ring, American Institutes for Research

• Chinmaya Udayakumar Holla, American Institutes for Research