Scaling Up

From India to Ghana

Since the pioneering evaluation of this project in India, the initial concept has been adapted, re-evaluated, and scaled-up across India, resulting in Pratham reaching 33 million children through their Read India program.  

Ghana Teacher Community Assistant Initiative (TCAI)

The Ghana Education Service, in partnership with the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP) and the Ghana National Association of Teachers (the teachers' union), is implementing a program that is based on these evaluations conducted by IPA and JPAL. The program is funded by the NYEP (the assistants’ salaries) and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) based in the UK. 

The context

Adapting research results to a new context is not a straightforward process. The new program needs to be designed in a way that makes use of the key ideas from the original intervention, but is adapted to the local context. Our initial analysis suggested that Ghana was an appropriate context for a replication of the intervention in India.

• The education budget was already 30% of the national budget, with basic education receiving around 55% an indication of the need for cost effective solutions.
• There are large initiatives underway, but teachers struggle to cope with children learning at a wide range of levels.

However there were some major challenges to adapting this intervention to Ghana:

• There was no obvious NGO similar to Pratham which could manage the project
• There could be less of a culture of volunteerism
• There were no unemployed and trained teachers

Baseline Survey

A baseline survey conducted by IPA found that pupils in the first three years of primary school are not yet meeting the national Ghanaian standards for proficiency in English, local languages and mathematics. In a simple test of basic skills administered to lower primary pupils in public schools, it was found that only 6% of class 3 children are able to read a basic class 3-level text.  Further, 20% of class 3 children were unable to even read letters. In numeracy, while 83% of P3 pupils could do single digit additions that resulted in a one digit answer, only 21% could do two digit additions. TCAI aims to close the gap between actual and desired learning levels, by providing crucial support to those pupils left behind.

The program

• Teacher Community Assistants are hired through NYEP and trained for a week (followed by refresher training sessions).
• They are then posted to a school in their own community, and their role will be to teach basic skills (math and literacy) to the lowest half of the class (2 hours per remedial class, 2 classes per day).
• Monitoring is then provided through the regular system (head teachers and circuit supervisors), as well as School Management Committees and via a cell phone based system

TCAI aims to help Ghanaian pupils in Primary 1, 2 and 3 improve their reading, writing and arithmetic, by providing crucial remedial education to pupils who lag behind.

Implementation and Evaluation Details

In order to rigorously establish whether the program works and if so how it works, an evaluation design will be built in to the program from the beginning.

Five hundred schools will be allocated to one of five groups;

1. Community assistants help pupils who are lagging behind in a separate class during school hours. Focus is placed on teaching the pupils at their level, while the rest of the class remains with the teacher.

2. This group will be the same as group 1, with the exception that pupils attend a remedial class after school hours.

3. Half the class is pulled out at random, rather than by their level, to work with the community assistant during school hours. The community assistant focuses on reinforcing what the regular class teacher is teaching. This third method tests the idea that smaller class sizes can lead to improved learning even when students are not grouped according to ability.

4. This group will not use an assistant but rather encourages the teacher to use activity-based learning and child-centered pedagogy in their normal classes as well as teaching to ability groups.

5. The control group, with no intervention.

Research Questions

The design of the program and evaluation will not only test whether the program works, but also

• if the program is effective, is it due to the remedial education, or simply because of smaller class sizes? 
• will reducing instructional time with the regular teacher (by pulling low performing students out the regular class) reduce learning levels?  If so, would remedial classes be more effective if conducted after school hours?
• can teachers achieve the same results without assistants, if trained to do so?

Further Implementation Details

Community assistants are a key component of TCAI. These assistants are not formally trained teachers, but are nominated members of the local community and recruited by NYEP.  They have received specialized training from GES on teaching basic skills to lowest performing pupils, and will partake in refresher courses throughout the program.

Another supporting philosophy behind the initiative is that education is not limited to the few hours that the child is in school, thus engagement with the community over education is an important part of the program.  The program partners with community members, such as the School Management Committee (SMC) and government partners from GES. These partners play an active role in monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the TCAs and ensuring the overall implementation of the program.

The initiative is being piloted in 400 randomly chosen schools across Ghana for a period of two years. In May 2011, TCAs and teachers were trained on testing, incorporating teaching and learning materials, teaching basic literacy and numeracy with a child-centered pedagogy, lesson planning, classroom management and using assessment and questioning techniques effectively. Both TCAs and teachers were trained and mentored by education specialists and trainers from GES. TCAs and teachers were also given the opportunity to test their newly learned skills through field practice.

By June 2011, 635 Teacher Community Assistants and 350 teachers will begin their teaching assignments. At that time various stakeholders will also begin continuous monitoring and assessment. The impact of the four methods will be evaluated using data collected throughout the program and, dependent on positive results; the program will be offered nationally.