Has the expansion in access to schooling led to increased learning?

Has the expansion in access to schooling led to increased learning?  

Over the last two decades, primary and secondary school enrollment have increased dramatically in many African countries. We are now in a position to ask: has the striking expansion in access to schooling led to an increase in learning? Many fear this is not be the case.  Such concerns have inspired a wave of citizen-led basic learning assessments, which intend not just to diagnose the problem of schooling without learning but also to remedy it by providing the public and policymakers with information that will spur action for change.

Despite the enthusiasm for such assessments, we know relatively little about the impact they have on citizen action and learning outcomes. In order to fill this gap, KALI is part of  Uwezo at Twaweza which commissioned  a series of rigorous evaluations of the Uwezo initiative, which we summarize and presented annually in a synthesis report.

Uwezo (meaning capability in Kiswahili), an initiative of Twaweza, is such a citizen-led assessment that aims to improve competencies in literacy and numeracy among children in  Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania and To date, Uwezo assessments have been carried out on a national scale in Kenya every year since 2009, and in Uganda and Tanzania every year since 2010. KALI’s Theory of Change (ToC) envisaged action by citizens at multiple levels – from parents to national leaders. The instant feedback given to parents – i.e. the immediate results on how a child scored on the Uwezo literacy and numeracy test – is central to the ToC, as is the hypothesis that as a result of it, parents will be motivated to take action to improve their children’s learning. In order to test this core hypothesis KALI in partnership with Twaweza commissioned a team of researchers to conduct a rigorous assessment of it.

This overview information situates KALI within other recent and ongoing research trends and findings on the importance of information in promoting citizen action, and the link between citizens, authorities, and patterns of accountability.

Unrealistic Assumptions?
KALI’s Theory of Change holds that as parents and communities become aware of the “crisis” of poor learning outcomes, they  “will take concrete steps to improve learning, either through private actions (e.g. pay more attention to homework, follow up with a teacher, pay for a tutor, change schools) or mount collective action.”  One possible reason for the lack of impact may well be that this core assumption was unrealistic: that is, knowledge about learning outcomes was not, by itself, sufficient to motivate parents to take “concrete steps to improve learning.”

Barriers to action

• Widespread norms against unofficial collective action
• Actors at local level say they have little influence over many of the key inputs into education
• Lack of information about government officials’ responsibilities
• People tend to look to elites for ideas and action

It is thus important to strengthen the link between information and citizen action (the information to action chain) and considers the impact of KALI in a comparative perspective.

By

Kule Obed 

Project officer KALI