IMPROVING LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR OUT-OF-SCHOOL CHILDREN: EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED EVALUATION OF AN ACCELERATED LEARNING PROGRAM IN LIBERIA.

Аннотация

Children in Liberia receive 2.2 learning-adjusted years of schooling, one of the lowest levels of educational attainment in the world. We study one approach to address low enrollment and low rates of learning: a 10-month accelerated learning program run by the Luminos Fund to help out-of-school children catch up to grade level. We conducted a randomized evaluation of the program across 100 communities in Liberia. We find that the program had large effects on reading and numeracy skills for out-of-school children, and that children in the program catch up to the learning levels of children in government schools. In sub-Saharan Africa learning levels are extremely low: 9 out of 10 children do not learn to read by age 10, a situation referred to as the ‘Learning Crisis’ (World Bank et al. ). The majority of children on the continent are in school but learning very little. However, in Liberia there is also a large population of out-of-school children, in part a consequence of the lingering effects of the Liberian civil wars, the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, two interrelated problems are responsible for the learning crisis in Liberia: many children are still out of school, and for those who do attend school, little learning is happening in schools. Since the turn of the twenty-first sub-Saharan Africa has made progress towards reducing the proportion of children who are out of school: Between 2000 and 2023 the out-of-school rate for primary school aged children in sub-Saharan Africa dropped from 37% to 19% (UNESCO Institute for Statistics ). However, in Liberia figures worsened, with the estimated https://scientific-jl.com/luch/ 2 1 3 Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025 out-of-school rate increasing from 27% in 2000 to 31% in 2023 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics ). As in other countries, in Liberia COVID-19 and associated school closures slowed down years of progress toward attaining universal enrollment, likely contributing to long-term negative effects for those children who were impacted (Azevedo et al. ; Republic of Liberia Ministry of Education; Psacharopoulos et al. ; World Bank et al). For children who enroll in school in Liberia, learning levels are low and learning gains are extremely slow, which contributes to decisions by families to unenroll their children in order to pursue income-generating activities or to marry at a young age (Kaffenberger, Sobol, and Spindelman ). While official data is scarce, one recent national study by the Liberian Ministry of Education (MoE) and Innovations for Poverty Action found that Grade 3 students were able to score only 24% on a basic literacy assessment, and Grade 6 students scored marginally better (36%). (Republic of Liberia Ministry of Education ). In our assessments of children enrolled in grades 1, 2, and 3 in government schools (described below), the average child is able to read only 7 words per minute (wpm) at the beginning of the school year – far below the threshold for reading fluency of at least 60 wpm – and this figure improves to only 14 wpm by the end of the school year. Fifty-three percent of students cannot read any words. Learning outcomes in Liberian schools have improved slightly since the civil wars but remain below regional and global averages. According to the World Bank in the Liberia Human Capital Assessment report, in 2020 a child born in Liberia is expected to complete 4.2 years of schooling by the time they turn 18. When this figure is adjusted for the quality of instruction, using learning-adjusted years of school (LAYS), a child in Liberia receives the equivalent of 2.2 years of quality schooling, one of the lowest values in the world (World Bank ). The MoE-Liberia has proposed interventions to improve the quality of instruction in government schools that include teacher education and professional development; revised curricula, teaching, and learning materials; improved distribution of classroom materials; and increased coverage of school feeding programs (Republic of Liberia Ministry of Education ). https://scientific-jl.com/luch/ 2 1 4 Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025 However, a recent review by Angrist et al. found that even though large sums have been directed towards these types of interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) between 2000 and 2015, there has been little improvement in learning outcomes. Evans and Yuan review 96 randomized controlled trials in education targeting learning in LMICs and calculate a median standardized effect size on interventions of 0.10 SDs learning gains; even programs at the 90th percentile of effectiveness attain a modest 0.45 SDs improvement in learning outcomes. Few interventions in education are having transformative impacts on learning. In this paper, we study one model to address the dual problems of low access to education and low rates of learning: an accelerated learning program for out-of-school children (OOSC) run by the Luminos Fund in Liberia. The Luminos P