A focus on equity: Providing intensive support visits to improve student learning outcomes in Ghana USAID Partnership for Learning Program

• In Event: Global Literacy SIG Highlighted Session: Supporting the needs of all students in the classroom: Remediation in a variety of contexts

Proposal

This presentation will describe how data gathered twice each term by government staff working as members of district teams. The data was collected during monitoring visits twice per month for 2 years, that focused on student learning progress, school support, whether daily classroom remediation sessions were taking place, and fidelity of program implementation including school-based coaching and biweekly school inset sessions. A set of criteria using the dashboard data was developed to identify schools identified as most likely to improve performance with additional support. This resulted in the identification of 1027 schools targeted for intensive support visits out of 7200 total schools project wide. Government education in-service training expert staff, the national core trainers who were working with the Learning project, participated in a one-day training on how to effectively conduct “intensive school support” visits with a focus on addressing the individual learning needs of all students. The national core trainers visited one school per day and submitted a report on each school visit. The dashboard data collected at the end of the term following the first visit were analyzed to determine how many schools remained eligible as in need of intensive support based on the selection criteria. Less than half of the original 1027 remained eligible as in need of support after one intensive support visit. Results from a regression discontinuity design analysis confirmed that there was a significant improvement in academic performance of schools visited one time compared with schools similar but not visited.

Data provide evidence that the intensive support visits had a measurable and positive impact on student learning outcomes and results suggest that the visits may have improved the quality of program implementation in those schools. Additional findings and possible explanations will be explored during the presentation.

Author

• Marcia Davidson, FHI 360