Two years of school closures in Uganda: Evidence from the Positive Deviance Study

• In Event: Lessons from COVID -19 in Lifelong Education

Proposal

COVID19 school closures imposed large losses on education systems, with children from poor households left worse-off everywhere (Moscoviz & Evans, 2022). Evidence is and will continue to emerge around the pre-pandemic learning gains that were lost due to forgetting, opportunities for new learning that were missed, early school exit decisions that young people made, and missed future life opportunities and earnings. Previous long-term country-level studies of similar disastrous events suggest that the full impacts will not be known for long and the most disadvantaged in society will incur disproportionately large negative impacts (Andrabi, Daniels & Das, 2020).
We had initiated the Positive Deviance Study in rural Uganda whereby we adopted some locally generated successful collaborations among and within schools in 2019. During the pandemic, we persisted our effort to create interaction among schools and their communities through radio talk shows and headteacher-level WhatsApp group discussion networks on how to continue learning during the pandemic. This paper describes our locally-adapted responses under pandemic situation and the continuation of the intervention after full reopening of schools. We analyze survey results involving 150 head teachers, 582 teachers, about 4,300 parents and more than 12,000 children we engaged since the baseline survey in 2019 until January 2022 when we conducted the midline survey. Highlighting the plight of the disadvantaged, this study responds to three questions. First, how much ‘learning loss’ and ‘failure to return’ was incurred due to school closures? Second, how effective was the information shared about the practices of positive deviants at minimizing the negative consequences of school closures? Third, after re-opening of schools, what strategies (if any) have been adopted to remedy the negative consequences of school closures?
With the classrooms shut, education systems, frontline providers and households adopted and adapted previously unconventional methods to keep children learning out of school. In L&MICs, children of the poor took to attending lessons on radio, communicating with their teachers via phone calls or SMS, and using photocopied notes for private study and completion of learning tasks or exercises. Some schools made extra efforts by reaching out to their students’ homes and making extra learning resources available to the children who showed up at school for individualized support and advice (Atuhurra, Winter & Nishimura, 2022; Angrist, Bergman & Matsheng, 2022).
After re-opening of schools in many countries, two key losses became immediately apparent – learning losses and the failure to return all children to school. More than a year after re-opening schools, we know very little about country efforts to return all children to school and remedy the learning losses suffered during the enforced closure periods. Some of the policy approaches adopted include introduction of compulsory attendance requirements to curb dropout, outlawing discrimination against attendance of young mothers or pregnant girls, adoption of abridged curricula to cover up for lost time, and institution of remedial classes to review earlier learning and get all children back on track.
This study covers a poverty-stricken geographical location in Eastern Uganda. Prior to the pandemic, primary education in Busoga Sub-region was characterized by extremely low learning achievements, high prevalence of child labor and minimal community participation. Focused on facilitating broader social learning from positive deviant school communities (SCs) within the sub-region, we designed a randomized intervention to spread actionable information to SCs about the practices of the positive deviants. When schools shut in March 2020, we adapted to remote delivery through radio talk shows and online peer groups. In Uganda, schools closed on 20th March 2020 and fully re-opened for all children on 10th January 2022 – two schooling years were lost.
We analyze both quantitative and qualitative data from 150 SCs before and during school closures, and immediately after schools re-opened for all children. At baseline (pre-pandemic) we tested all 5–16-year-old children found in our sample households on their basic literacy and numeracy competences, and surveyed head teachers, teachers and household heads. To gain a fair understanding of what was happening in schools and homes following school closures, we interviewed on phone a small portion of parents, teachers and head teachers. Qualitative data is in form of twenty-two (twelve from August – December 2020, and 10 from August – November 2021) radio talk show transcripts, and archived headteacher-level peer conversations via “WhatsApp”. After schools re-opened in January 2022, we conducted a midline survey, involving re-testing children and surveying headteachers, teachers and parents. We employ descriptive statistical analysis methods to report on learning loss and early school exits associated with school closures. Exploiting random assignment of SCs to ‘SMS invitation or encouragement’ to tune-in to the radio talk shows and headteacher participation in the online WhatsApp peer network, we identify the effects of these low-cost local solution-based interventions in reducing the extent of learning loss and early school exits suffered. We conduct syntheses of field reports from the currently ongoing school-level peer teacher support sessions to unearth strategies being used to recover lost learning.
Similar to other studies conducted in different contexts, we find that school closures led to major declines in basic literacy and numeracy competences for all children. Larger declines were experienced by children enrolled in lower primary grades pre-pandemic and from poor households. We also find that up to 24 percent of previously school-going children had not returned to school one month after schools re-opened, the majority of whom were children from lower primary grades. On a positive note, our preliminary findings suggest that the low-cost remote engagement radio talk shows and headteacher networks may have contributed to reducing the extent of the learning losses suffered in the sub-region. Finally, we find that the abridged curriculum adopted by the Government of Uganda as a strategy to recover the two lost years has left teachers confused about how to deal with the extreme learning losses children suffered during the closures. Worse still, the positive learning improvement strategies that had been adopted during school closures are steadily being rolled back.

Authors

• julius favourite atuhurra, Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE)

• Mikiko Nishimura, International Christian University