https://scientific-jl.com/luch/
Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025
213
IMPROVING LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR OUT-OF-SCHOOL
CHILDREN: EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED EVALUATION OF AN
ACCELERATED LEARNING PROGRAM IN LIBERIA.
DJUMAYEVA GULNORA AMIRKULOVNA
Prepare: teacher of the “Special sciences” department of special school № 2 of
Chilonzor district of Tashkent city
.
Annotation: 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/
Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025
214
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/
Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025
215
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 Program is a 10-month program that teaches
children basic reading and numeracy skills and supports children’s socio-emotional
development. The Luminos Program covers the first three grades of school in order to help
OOSC catch up to grade level and enroll into government schools. Luminos was founded in
2016 and currently runs programs in Ethiopia, Ghana, Lebanon, Liberia, and The Gambia.
Over the 2022–2023 school year, we conducted a clustered randomized controlled trial
(RCT) of the Luminos Program in Liberia. Out of 100 eligible communities, we randomly
allocated 50 communities to the treatment group and 50 communities to the control group. We
assessed 1,502 OOSC at baseline and endline on literacy (using the Early Grade Reading
Assessment, or EGRA) and numeracy (using the Early Grade Math Assessment, or EGMA) in
49 treatment and 49 control communities. We also assessed 348 government schoolchildren
(GSC) in grades 1, 2, and 3 from the nearby primary schools in every study community to
provide a benchmark for learning gains of enrolled students.
We find that the Luminos Program had large, positive, and statistically significant effects
after ten months on all assessed reading and numeracy skills. Children in the treatment group
were able to read 4.5x as many words per minute and complete twice as many addition and
subtraction problems at endline compared to children in the control group. Treatment effects
https://scientific-jl.com/luch/
Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025
216
were between 0.5 SD and 2.1 SD for all reading and numeracy subtasks, and specifically were
1.6 SD for reading simple words and 0.6 SD for addition and subtraction. Effects were similar
in size for girls vs boys, younger vs older children, children who were previously enrolled in
school vs dropouts, and children who started with lower baseline learning levels vs higher
baseline learning levels. Compared with similarly-aged children enrolled in nearby
government schools, OOSC in the treatment group started with lower learning levels but
surpassed their GSC peers in terms of reading and nearly caught up in terms of numeracy by
the end of the program.
Our study contributes to three strands of literature in an understudied region. First, we
contribute to the literature on how to improve foundational learning outcomes in LMICs. There
have been several studies in the past couple of decades on how to improve education in low-
resource and the strong threshold effects whereby future learning is not possible until reading
fluency has been attained (Abadzi ), there is a need for more evidence on what types of
approaches can generate transformational learning outcomes in developing countries.
Akyeampong et al. highlight three interventions that are ‘great buys’ to improve learning
outcomes in developing countries because they are both cost-effective and supported by a
strong div of evidence: providing information on the benefits, costs, and quality of education;
supporting teachers with structured pedagogy; and targeting teaching instruction by learning
level. We provide further evidence that one of these intervention categories – structured
pedagogy, which is a key component of the Luminos Program – can be an effective approach
to improving learning outcomes in LMICs.
Second, we contribute to the literature on what works to improve learning outcomes in an
education system with some of the lowest learning levels in the world. Learning outcomes
remain critically low in Liberia, yet relatively few rigorous evaluations have been conducted
to identify which interventions are effective in helping Liberian children catch up to their peers
in other countries. One of the few education programs in Liberia that has been rigorously
evaluated is the Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP).Footnote
https://scientific-jl.com/luch/
Часть-37_ Том-2_ Январь-2025
217
partner public-private partnership that was designed to build capacity within Liberia’s
education system and improve student learning outcomes. A recent randomized controlled trial
of LEAP found that after three years students in LEAP schools performed 0.18 SDs better in
math and 0.21 SDs better in English, compared to students in control schools (Romero and
Sandefur ). We contribute to this nascent literature in Liberia on how public and private
education providers can deliver meaningful learning gains.
Finally, our study contributes to literature on how to integrate OOSC into the formal
school system. To our knowledge there is little evidence on what works to help integrate
primary-school aged OOSC into the formal education system in LMICs. One exception is a
study by Ferráns et al, who found that a 7-month accelerated learning program led to positive,
small-to-medium impacts on literacy and numeracy for OOSC in northeast Nigeria. We build
on this work by highlighting a successful approach to generating large learning gains for out-
of-school children in Liberia.
