Community-based catch-up learning and well-being support: evaluations in Myanmar and the Philippines

• In Event: Equity and Inclusion in Education: What Role for Remediation?

Proposal

COVID-19 derailed a fragile education system for conflict-affected and economically disadvantaged children in Myanmar and the Philippines experienced one of the longest pandemic-induced school closures in the world. Catch-up Clubs (CuCs) address economic and protection barriers to returning to and staying in schools and tackle the learning loss of vulnerable children ages 8-13 by providing after-school remedial learning with a focus on Literacy and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). The approach integrates elements from other programs that have successfully demonstrated rapid learning gains and build on Save the Children’s existing expertise in community-based learning, child protection and child poverty programming.

The studies in Myanmar and the Philippines were specifically designed for conflict-affected children, with gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, displacement, and access to schooling all considered in the analysis. To investigate the causal-effect relationship between the CuCs and children’s literacy outcome and SEL competency, the Myanmar study applied a quasi-experimental design, while the Philippines study applied a randomised control trial design. Both studies used a cluster sampling approach – with randomly assigning clusters of children at the village level in Myanmar (n=1,200 intervention and control children across 68 clusters) and assigning clusters at the school level in the Philippines (n=2,400 intervention and control children across 100 clusters).

Data was collected from children in the upper primary level (grades 3-6 and age 8 -15 years) who struggle with reading grade-2 level. A baseline survey was conducted to establish benchmarks for the key outcome indicators prior to the CuCs intervention. An online survey was conducted within three months at the end of CuCs activities, to the same children - to specifically understand the progress or change over time. The qualitative analysis from FGDs with children, facilitators/coaches, caregivers, project team and school coordinators was used as a complementary analysis to specifically understand the project’s acceptability, appropriateness, relevance, and fidelity.

CuCs are effective in enabling children most impacted by inequality in the emergency setting of active conflict in Myanmar and the Philippines to make gains in literacy and SEL competency. The children who participated in the CuCs made substantially greater learning gains than children who did not participate. There was a minimal gap between reading results for girls and boys in the intervention group, whereas boys were ahead of girls in the control group.

Although learning gain was substantially higher for the CuCs children than for the non-CuCs children, less than half of the children were able to reach the highest level (reading story with comprehension) at the end of CuCs activities. This was associated with the evidence of a vast majority of children speaking a language other than the language of instruction in learning. It suggests the design of future intervention shall be expanded not only for developing reading skills but also building language proficiency in the multilingual context.

Authors

• Nora Charif Chefchaouni, Save the Children

• Silvia Mila Arlini, Save the Children International ARO