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Highlighted Session: Tackling learning loss: Cross country learnings on Catch-up Clubs

Wed, February 15, 7:45 to 9:15am EST (7:45 to 9:15am EST), On-Line Component, Zoom Room 103

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Schools around the world have been forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 which resulted in 1.6 billion children disrupting the education of an entire generation (UNESCO, 2020). Even before the pandemic hit, 617 million children and adolescents around the world were unable to reach minimum proficiency levels in reading and math, despite two-thirds of them being in school (UNESCO, 2017). With prolonged school closures caused by COVID-19, the number of children falling behind skyrocketed widening learning gaps and impacting historically disadvantaged students the hardest. According to UNICEF data, 147 million children missed more than half of their in-person schooling over the past two years, which equals to 2 trillion hours of lost-in person globally. In low and middle income countries (LMICs), over half (53%) of all ten-year-old children who were enrolled in school pre-pandemic were experiencing Learning Poverty, being unable to read and understand simple text for their age (UNICEF, 2021). In the countries with strong prevalence of political conflict and widespread of violence and humanitarian rights abuses, the education outlook in the country even looks worse. We also estimate that at least 10–16 million children are at risk of never returning to school (Save the Children, 2021).
Learning poverty has been exacerbated despite the incredible efforts by government and other stakeholder to provide remote learning opportunities, as many children were unable to access those opportunities for a variety of reasons. Many did not always have the support they needed alongside with the materials including connectivity to help them to understand and learn. Economic impact and psychosocial/emotional impact of COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and might have resulted in child ability to transition back to school.
Catch-up Clubs (CUCs) is a community-led education model to improve the literacy and wellbeing of children across the SCI program participants. CUCs are a highly targeted and data-driven intervention, that can be implemented and scaled up rapidly, providing the boost that is needed to get millions of children back into school. CUCs bring together elements of proven programs that achieve results for children make effective use of our existing capacity and resources at the local community level, which makes them quick to implement.
The three key components of our approach are:
1) Community-based remedial reading: CUCs will build on our existing work with community-run camps and clubs, as well as our literacy flagship program and Pratham's evidence-based approach Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL).
2) Child Protection Case Management: Child Protection case workers will ensure that the most vulnerable children are referred by CUC learning facilitators and teachers to case management services so that they can receive the timely individual services and psychological support they need to succeed.
3) Financial support to families: We will identify families unable to send their children to school because of the economic impacts of COVID-19 and the need for children's support in the household. We will provide these families with Cash and Vouchers assistance (CVA) or links to existing social protection schemes to support children's participation in CUCs.
The CuCs model has been piloted in Colombia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malawi and Uganda, as a part of Education in Emergencies and Safe Back to School initiatives. It is designed to:
• address immediate educational needs of children in upper primary grades who have been put at high risk of academic failure due to COVID-19
• reduce the risk of increased grade repetition and dropout through community-based and targeted learning opportunities in the foundation of literacy.
• provides integrated financial and community level case management support to ensure participation, protection and wellbeing of eligible children in the community.
The intended result of CUCs is for at least 80 percent of participating children to be able to read and write at a level sufficient for them to learn independently, so that children are able to continue meaningful learning in school.
This panel features some research, evaluation and lessons learned from CuCs pilot programs in Colombia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malawi and Uganda. The first paper entitled "Myanmar Catch-Up Clubs: A community-led education model to improve literacy and wellbeing of children experiencing education disruption due to the coup and COVID-19 pandemic" will describe the impact and fidelity to the program in conflict-oriented contexts, as well as its best practices, lessons learned, and challenges. The second paper entitled "Working with Government and Community stakeholders for a Sustainable Children's Literacy Improvement: Catch up Clubs in Uganda and Malawi" will present the evaluation results that will inform scale and sustainability in Uganda and Malawi. The third paper entitled "Catch Up Club pilot in Rural Bangladesh: Bridging the learning gap among the children with learning inequality and discrimination" will describe their learnings and experiences from implementing the three components of CUCs (reading clubs, child protection, and financial support). The fourth paper entitled " Learning from the community: Qualitative study exploring the community engagement in Colombia Catch-up Clubs" will present findings on community engagement and capacity strengthening, contrasting experiences from urban and rural areas.
The overall focus of this panel is to expand the conversation on this rapid-to-scale approach by bringing together colleagues from different countries where CUCs have been piloted, as a way not only to share research findings but also to learn how teams have incorporated learnings into future program design implementation. This panel will offer ideas relevant to addressing the learning loss crisis and an opportunity to discuss and learn about the effectiveness and scalability of the CUCs, challenges faced in multiple contexts, and strategies the local teams used to address these challenges.

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