Girls in CARE’s projects in Afghanistan are spending an additional day every week in school, and their grades are going up by 4%. Boys are doing better, too—and the gap between boys and girls is getting smaller. How does that happen? Getting communities involved in education, and hiring qualified teachers.
The Assessment of Learning Outcomes and Social Effects project ran in Afghanistan from 2014-2015 and evaluated Community-Based Education work from CARE and CRS.
What did we accomplish?
- Kids spent more time in school: Kids in community-based education projects spent one more day a week in school than those who weren’t in school. Girls were 16 percentage points more likely to attend school at all, and boys 13 percentage points.
- Kids—especially girls—do better in school: Girls’ test scores went up the equivalent of 4.1 points out of a hundred, and boys by 3.7. In the American school system, this is the equivalent of going from a B to a B+.
- Parents are more satisfied with the quality of education: Parents are 10 percentage points more likely to think their kids have a quality teacher, 9 percentage points more likely to think the school is high quality, and 13 percentage points more likely to think there are high quality books and education materials.
- People build trust with the government: Parents who have kids in a CBE program are more likely to trust public service providers across the board—both NGOs and the government.
How did we get there?
- Invest in quality teachers: Spending $100 on a qualified teacher has a 40% higher effect on test scores and 43% more on attendance than spending $100 on a less qualified local teacher.
- Get parents involved: The projects set up school management committees and social audits so parents and community members could get involved in improving the quality of education—and could really see the benefits of investing.
- Build learning spaces: CARE and CRS set up community-based education centers with local teachers and materials so that kids had somewhere to go to school and better access to quality education.
- Experiment and adjust: The projects tried setting up parent reading groups to see if investing in adult literacy helped with test scores. According to this study, that didn’t have any effect on kids’ scores or attendance. Standard community outreach had better results.