̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Camfed

Raise the floor: education that works for everyone

Anonymous — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 08:25:50 +0000

̽��ֱ��evidence that convinced the international community that putting disadvantaged children first creates education systems that work for everyone.

‘Spill-over’ effects show hidden value of prioritising education of poorest children and marginalised girls

tdk25 — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 10:11:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��newly-reported study, by academics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, is one of the first to measure the complete value that interventions targeting poor and marginalised children also have for many of their peers, principally through ‘spill-over’ effects which improve the wider education system.

̽��ֱ��team tested their model by analysing a programme by CAMFED (the Campaign for Female Education) in Tanzania, which supports the education of disadvantaged girls. They took into account its impact not just on those girls, but on other children at schools where their programme operates. Strikingly, for every $100 spent per girl, per year, the programme resulted in learning gains equivalent to an additional two years of education for all girls and boys at those schools.

̽��ֱ��study was carried out by members of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Professor Ricardo Sabates, the co-lead researcher, said: “Helping the most marginalised children inevitably costs more, and most cost-effectiveness measures only consider that expense against the impact on those specific pupils. But programmes like CAMFED’s also have spill-over benefits and critically are keeping girls in school who would otherwise have dropped out. We can, and should, factor in those considerations when assessing cost-effectiveness.”

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, added: “While it may cost more to reach the most marginalised pupils, the impact of those efforts is far more impressive than we tend to imagine. This research explains why system reforms should focus on those who need the most support. Education systems that function for the most marginalised children function for everyone.”

CAMFED is a non-governmental organisation which improves the education of marginalised girls in Africa and was recently awarded the 2020 Yidan Prize for Education Development. In Tanzania, its bursaries enable thousands of girls to attend secondary school, in tandem with interventions aimed at improving participation and learning among all children in partner schools.

Because most cost-effectiveness analyses only measure the impact of a programme on its direct beneficiaries (in this case marginalised girls), interventions such as CAMFED’s often seem to have limited reach while at the same time appearing more expensive than those targeting a broader demographic. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge study examined how best to measure the wider impact of CAMFED’s work in Tanzania, and then used this to refine the cost-effectiveness analysis.

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed data from CAMFED’s programme over two years. To calculate per-head costs, they distinguished between the different components of the intervention and their assorted beneficiaries. For example, the cost of bursaries was divided by the number of marginalised girls who received them, but the cost of delivering extra-curricular courses in CAMFED-supported schools was divided by the number of all participating students. This provided a basis for identifying average annual unit costs for individual categories of beneficiaries.

Impact was calculated by comparing the English test scores of children from 81 randomly-selected CAMFED-supported schools with children from 60 control schools that received no support. Scores were collected at the start and end of the two years, and the team used data about the children’s socio-economic background to make direct comparisons between pupils from similar settings.

They also compared the dropout rates at both groups of schools, and used this to weight the final cost-effectiveness analysis. This reflected the fact that CAMFED’s programme not only improves learning, but also supports girls who might otherwise have dropped out of school, or never attended at all.

̽��ֱ��cost of the programme, when only the most marginalised girls targeted by the bursaries were considered, was apparently steep: at $130.41 per year for each girl receiving financial support. However, the researchers also found that the per-head cost for other boys and girls at the same schools was just $15.40, demonstrating far greater value for money overall. ̽��ֱ��additional cost of the bursaries was also found to be vital for enabling the most disadvantaged girls to stay in school.

Pupils attending CAMFED-supported schools made significant academic improvements compared with their peers. ̽��ֱ��improvement in English test scores among girls receiving financial support was about 35% better than comparable girls in the control group. But other girls also performed similarly, while the boys did about 25% better. Girls who received financial support were 25% less likely to drop out of school than those in the control group.

̽��ֱ��researchers then calculated the learning gains of pupils on the CAMFED programme per unit cost. When this measure was converted into equivalent years of learning, they found that for every $100 spent on each of the marginalised girls targeted, English learning outcomes improved by the equivalent of an extra 1.45 years of schooling for all pupils. When the increased proportion of marginalised girls remaining in school was factored in, the improvement in both access and learning for all girls and boys across the CAMFED schools was actually equivalent to an additional two years of schooling per $100.

While it is difficult to compare these results with other programmes, the study suggests that the cost-effectiveness of CAMFED’s work in Tanzania is at least commensurate with similar interventions in sub-Saharan Africa that do not target marginalised groups. But the findings may also be conservative. For example, CAMFED’s programme may also have further benefits outside the school system, for example among the siblings and communities of the young women it supports.

“Even though we probably underestimated its impact, this intervention is still extremely cost-effective,” Sabates added. “It shows real improvements in learning are best enabled when we invest in the children at greatest risk of being left behind.”

̽��ֱ��research is published in the Journal of Development Effectiveness.

Development projects that target the education of the world’s very poorest girls also significantly improve other young people’s attainment, according to new research that suggests such initiatives should become a priority for international aid.

Real improvements in learning are best enabled when we invest in the children at greatest risk of being left behind

Ricardo Sabates

CAMFED/Eliza Powell

Sophia (right), a CAMFED Learner Guide, with secondary student Hanipha, who she supports at school in Morogoro, Tanzania

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

“A girl without education is nothing in the world”

lw355 — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 09:15:12 +0000

By the time she was 13 years old, Vumilia had supported herself through primary school by collecting and selling firewood. Now she faced an even greater challenge. After weeks of anxiety, Vumilia left home at 4.30 a.m. to walk the 10 km to secondary school; she had no pencils, no uniform and no money to pay her school fees.

Twelve-year-old Husna had no choice but to leave school to work, helping to support her grandmother and siblings on her US$14 a month working as a housemaid. Husna would wonder what lay ahead of her: “I was imagining that my life would be horrible. Because even if I stopped being a maid,where would I go? What would I do?”

Catherine also saw a bleak future. After the death of her father, her uncles took her family’s land. Some days Catherine would manage to go to school; on others she would sell food by the roadside. “I would see other children studying and all the time I would just look at their exercise books and try to learn. I was imagining my future as going into a big hole where no one could help me. A girl without education is nothing in the world. Education is everything.”

Vumilia, Husna and Catherine all live in Tanzania in East Africa. With an economy based largely on agriculture, Tanzania has among the lowest rate of secondary school enrolment in Africa. Many girls from poor, rural families can’t afford the cost of going to secondary school and leave home to become ‘house girls’ in urban centres. There, they sometimes experience abuse and exploitation, returning home infected with HIV, or pregnant. Sadly, Catherine’s prediction of a desperate future is all too accurate.

“Education is a fundamental human right,” says Professor Pauline Rose from Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, “but moving between that undeniable statement and on-the-ground change is a long and complex process. Education is at the heart of social transformation – it increases opportunities in life, can pull people out of poverty, empower women and drive economic growth. Understanding the barriers that prevent this happening is crucial.”

Rose is Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre in the Faculty of Education. Working with NGOs, schools and education policymakers in African countries, India and Pakistan, her team is highlighting the factors that limit children’s learning and the mechanisms that can improve the effectiveness of teaching.

“Firstly, children need to be able to access primary and secondary school. But it is also important to make sure that this is valuable – there’s little point in being in school if children don’t learn the skills they need,” she explains. “And while this needs to happen for all children, we know that it is often girls from poor households who are the most disadvantaged when it comes to completing education.”

Fortunately for Vumilia, Husna and Catherine, they are now among over 40,000 Tanzanian girls who in the past decade have been helped into secondary education by the non-profit organisation Camfed (Campaign for Female Education), with whom the REAL team has a research partnership.

Since 1993, Camfed has supported more than 1.6 million students in five African countries to attend primary and secondary school, and has benefited nearly four million children through the provision of improved learning. A range of barriers to schooling are targeted through scholarships, mentoring, educational resources and community-led initiatives.

̽��ֱ��organisation particularly focuses on those girls who are poorest and most likely to be excluded from the school system, and at an age where they are at greater risk of dropping out due to poverty, early marriage or pregnancy.

“There is a pressure in the development sector to want to find the ‘silver bullet’ – find the vaccine – in terms of what can be done to effect social change,” explains Camfed CEO Lucy Lake. “We see girls’ education as the starting point to everything – from tackling poverty and early mortality through to driving economic development – it generates a multiplier effect like no other.”

However, Lake is quick to point out that there is still much to be done to raise learning outcomes for all, and that evidence is crucial. “Reducing the chance that children leave school early or without basic literacy and numeracy skills is clearly important but which interventions work best, with whom and when?”

Rose’s team is helping Camfed unpick the basis of the organisation’s on-the-ground results. Building on the evidence of Camfed’s successful programme, the research will not only provide a unique large-scale analysis of the cost-effectiveness of educational programmes, but will also contribute to understanding how they can be sustained.

“An obvious point, but an important one to make, is that it’s not that poor children can’t learn,” says Rose. “It’s that the conditions that affect whether they go to school and stay in education are much worse. Our evidence shows for instance that when poor children and rich children are in the same class there’s a very, very narrow learning gap. But what is less clear is by what mechanism targeted support can level the playing field.”

Rose continues: “It’s all very well saying how beneficial Camfed’s programme is but we also need to assess why, and how this can be replicated across an education system.”

Three years ago, Camfed won funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) to scale up their work as part of the Girls’ Education Challenge programme. Lake describes how they saw this as an opportunity to do this at the community level rather than at an organisational level. “More girls would gain if we could scale locally without needing to grow a costly and potentially unsustainable organisation at this end,” she explains.

“Because disadvantage is so nuanced, we work with local communities to identify who should receive scholarships. As a result, there’s a sense that these are the community’s resources and not the resources of an organisation coming in and making decisions.”

Securing funding from DFID was also an opportunity to take a critical look at precisely how Camfed’s programmes are meeting the needs of those who are most marginalised. Camfed routinely collects data for evaluation purposes and they now turned this over to Rose’s team at the REAL Centre for deeper analysis.

Rose explains: “We are independent – we aren’t wishing to make a case one way or the other. We could see how these data could help us uncover the factors that limit children’s learning, which could have lessons beyond Camfed’s own programme. Globally, even after going to school, 250 million children cannot read, write or count. It’s been described by UNESCO as a global learning crisis.”

With funding from Echnida Giving, the REAL team has recently completed its first analysis of Camfed’s data in Tanzania, comparing enrolment and learning outcomes for girls supported by the organisation with those for girls who didn’t receive support. “We found that marginalised girls receiving a bursary were about 30% more likely to stay in education, and those in Camfed-supported schools on average tripled their assessment scores compared with those in other schools,” Rose says.

They also looked at how the Camfed programme’s influence on self-esteem affected learning. In particular, a system of ‘Learner Guides’ aims to expand the presence of female role models, lead students through a broad life skills curriculum, organise academic study groups, and provide counselling and follow-up on students in danger of dropping out. Again the programme was found to benefit the learning of those identified as having low self-esteem before the intervention.

“We have quantitative evidence that what Camfed is doing works,” Rose adds. “ ̽��ֱ��next questions are: how much does it cost to reach the most marginalised girls, how far can it be scaled up and how sustainable is it?”

National governments need these answers to consider policy changes and budget allocation. In fact, Camfed’s approach has always been to work in tandem with local stakeholders.

“Whenever we start in a country, we never start with setting up an office, we always start with the Ministry of Education,” says Lake. “We work with them to identify those areas where there is the greatest disparity in terms of enrolment, academic performance and so on, and where it makes sense for us to come in as a partner to work on improving those areas.”

However, as with any NGO, there is always a danger that if funds were to run out then the programmes could falter and fail. Understanding cost-effectiveness, says Rose, is imperative to understanding how any NGO programme can be sustained: “There have been assessments for how to improve access to school and how to improve learning but very little on both together.”

Lake highlights the timeliness of the study: “While there’s a general movement towards ensuring that there’s free education for all, there’s a real concern that expansion in secondary level provision might lead to exclusion of those who are most marginalised.”

It’s also vital not to lose sight of primary education in the mix, says Rose: “There’s only so much you can fix once children get to secondary school. If you don’t start early enough then you will only have a select group of children who will benefit from improved education later.”

Her team works with the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network – an independent organisation that measures basic reading and numeracy abilities of children across three continents through annual citizen-led assessments. Since these skills are mostly learned at primary school, the partnership between the REAL Centre and the PAL Network is helping to work out how well the building blocks for future progress in school are being laid down at this early age.

“We are now in a position to look at the bigger picture, thanks to recent funding by the Hewlett Foundation,” Rose explains. “It’s vitally important to collect data on children’s learning. We now want to ask how this collecting of data has motivated or contributed to community engagement at making schooling more effective at a country-wide level.

“Just knowing that there are low levels of learning is not going to change anything – the idea is to strengthen the accountability of schools and policymakers at the local level by making information from surveys available to communities, and ensuring they have the support to use these data effectively.”

When Lake is asked whether she thinks the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring that “all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education” will be met by 2030, she says: “It’s a tall order. There is momentum building but the next 18 months will be critical in terms of seeing what level of investment or commitment there is in practical terms.

“But that doesn’t mean to say it’s not possible, and understanding the costs will be important to achieving the goal. It’s a powerful piece of knowledge for any government to know what to look at in policies around education.” Rose agrees: “Our new work is helping to move beyond rhetoric – to provide answers for where we want to be in 2030.”

Inset images: credit Camfed/E. Powell (top, bottom) and Camfed/D. Hayduk (middle).

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

Half the children in Africa miss out on school and basic learning as a result of poverty, gender or disability. While major efforts are being made to reverse this situation, Cambridge researchers are working with NGOs on the ground to ask what works, why and how much it costs.

It’s a powerful piece of knowledge for any government to know what to look at in policies around education

Lucy Lake, CEO Camfed

Camfed/P. Hayes

Vumilia walks 10 km to school

Staying in school is not as easy as it sounds

“There’s a need to face the fact that there are complex issues that result in fewer girls receiving a secondary education,” says Lucy Lake, CEO of Camfed.

“It costs more to send girls to school because of the additional wraparound costs. A girl going to school will need proper clothing because protecting her decency is very important. This is especially true for secondary school level because schools may be a long distance from home. If she needs to walk for several hours or find local places to stay this makes girls vulnerable to abuse. That’s why many may drop out prematurely.

̽��ֱ��need to earn money to support siblings is another factor. You find that girls aren’t missing school because parents don’t want them to be there, it’s because of poverty. In the history of Camfed across the five countries we work in – Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi – not one parent has turned down support for their daughter to go to school.

Pregnancy and early marriage is an issue but if you dig deeper to find reasons behind it, they are often poverty-related. In Tanzania, there was an extreme case we came across in one district following a period of drought. Girls living near school had no access to water and were seeking out ‘sugar daddies’ to earn money to buy buckets of water. Girls are being put in positions of risk that sometimes translate to early pregnancy.

Early marriage is often cited – but again the situation is more complex. Girls are not necessarily dropping out to get married – it’s more that the system is pushing them out because it requires a certain level of pass rates to progress from one level of the school to another. If there’s a small window between leaving school and getting married it’s often assumed you’ve left school to get married, whereas for many marriage becomes the only option for future security. That’s why it’s so critical to get right the support systems in school, and the pathways of opportunity beyond school.”

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

̽��ֱ��Prince of Wales and ̽��ֱ��Duchess of Cornwall visit Cambridge to mark auspicious anniversaries

ag236 — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 13:00:16 +0000

Their Royal Highnesses were welcomed to the Fitzwilliam Museum by by the Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, Sir Hugh Duberly, by the Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, and by the Museum’s Director, Mr Tim Knox.

At the Museum, they met pupils from King’s Hedges School and Soham Village College taking part in educational activities designed by the museum to allow primary school children to interact with the exhibits.

̽��ֱ��Prince of Wales and ̽��ֱ��Duchess of Cornwall met staff from the Fitzwilliam Museum, and were shown treasures from the Museum’s collection including a unique sculpture in wax, “Arabesque over the Right Leg, Left Arm in Front”, by Edgar Degas, and a European medieval illuminated manuscript.

Staff from the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library demonstrated the latest digitisation techniques, and displayed rare items from the UL’s collection including a copy of Charles Darwin’s On the origin of species by means of natural selection (1859) and Andreas Vesalius De humani corporis fabrica librorum epitome (1543).

Also at the Fitzwilliam, Their Royal Highnesses met with representatives of ̽��ֱ��-led and local outreach, education and development initiatives including the Cambridge-Africa Programme, the Cambridge Development Initiative, the Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre, the Campaign for Female Education, and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, of which ̽��ֱ��Prince is Patron. They were then introduced to foreign students awarded the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarships.

Addressing Their Royal Highnesses after the Museum visit, the Vice-Chancellor said:

“It is especially gratifying to welcome ̽��ֱ��Prince of Wales back to Cambridge as one of our most distinguished alumni. There are some 230,000 active members of the ̽��ֱ��’s alumni networks around the world. His Royal Highness is not only one of the most prominent among them, but also one of the most supportive of the ̽��ֱ��. We are grateful for his key role as Patron to the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and to the Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust.”

In the afternoon, Their Royal Highnesses attended a rehearsal of the King’s College Choir.

̽��ֱ��Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge on Tuesday 29 November to mark the Fitzwilliam Museum’s bicentenary and to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

His Royal Highness is not only one of the most prominent among our alumni, but also one of the most supportive of the ̽��ֱ��.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

Nick Saffell

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Cambridge gets REAL about overcoming obstacles to global education

pbh25 — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:32:58 +0000

A new centre that will focus on understanding the barriers to education among disadvantaged children, and on identifying solutions to overcome those barriers, was officially launched in Cambridge on Tuesday 16 June.

̽��ֱ��Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, based within the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, aims to promote education as an engine for sustainable development, and to pioneer research into overcoming obstacles to education including poverty, gender, ethnicity, language and disability.

̽��ֱ��launch event at Corpus Christi College’s McCrum Lecture Theatre brought together speakers including Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia and current Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, and Dr Hans Brattskar, State Secretary of Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to discuss the subject of “Achieving social transformation through education”.

Welcoming the keynote speakers, the Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, said: “ ̽��ֱ��launch of the REAL centre is an opportunity to celebrate education, and girls’ education in particular, and to underline the importance of education as a key to social transformation.”

He reminded the audience that “the REAL centre builds on the Faculty of Education’s strong expertise in research of the highest quality that aims to address real problems and influence policy on the ground. It will focus on the challenges of the most marginalised –including girls from poor households, or those with disabilities—in the poorest countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

Addressing a packed auditorium, Julia Gillard spoke of the 121 million children of primary and lower-secondary school age who are not in school –at least 60 million of whom are girls. At current rates of enrolment, she said, it will be at least another century before the gap in learning outcomes is bridged between developed and developing countries. “Unsurprisingly,” she noted, “girls will get there last.”

̽��ֱ��benefits of all girls in developing countries being educated to secondary level would be immediate and long-lasting –a significant decrease in child marriages and a fall in child deaths being only two of the most obvious. “ ̽��ֱ��education of girls is transformative. It is a moral duty and also an economic imperative. Business as usual is nowhere near good enough. By not acting we fail the children and deny ourselves the best possible future.”

She called for “more research, more resources and more innovation” to ensure that all countries are committed to inclusive and equitable quality education. “It is a mammoth undertaking”, she said, before adding: “ ̽��ֱ��need for the REAL centre is pressing. It will make a difference in helping us to understand what works to make education more equitable. It will generate much light to educate every child, including every girl. ̽��ֱ��REAL centre will be one of real achievement.”

Speaking about Norway’s efforts to ensure global equality of education, ahead of the Oslo Summit for Education and Development in July, Dr Hans Brattskar said: “Equality of education means education for all, including children with disabilities. It also means ensuring education for the 36% of children currently living in areas of armed conflict or caught in humanitarian crises.” To provide equitable education “we have to ensure research is applied in a way that leads to concrete policy and learning”, he said. “REAL will be key to strengthening this evidence-base.”.

Professor Pauline Rose, director of the REAL, spoke about the new centre on a panel following the keynote presentations: “ ̽��ֱ��three words that describe REAL are rigour, partnership and impact. We have to deliver high-quality research that is accessible to policy-makers. We can’t do this on our own, and so partnerships are essential.”

She announced a new partnership with the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed), the Cambridge-based international non-profit organisation that aims to tackle poverty and inequality by supporting girls to go to school and develop leadership qualities across countries in sub-Saharan Africa. “It is difficult to find evidence for what works in education,” Professor Rose said. “Camfed’s work is an important exception. We look forward to working together with Camfed, drawing on their experience on the ground, and working together to provide a strong evidence-base on girls’ education.”

Sharing the panel with her was Camfed’s Chief Executive Officer, Lucy Lake, who remarked: “We have to be insistent on girls’ rights to education. That has to be our starting point. But we must go beyond and make explicit the link between girls’ education and economic opportunity. That’s where evidence-based research is essential.”

Also on the panel was Fiona Mavhinga, a founding member of the CAMA, the pan-African network of young women leaders for girls’ education supported by Camfed, who spoke movingly about her own experience of achieving education despite challenging circumstances. “I am sitting her today as a lawyer because of the support I got from Camfed. I was a seventeen-year old girl from a disadvantaged Zimbabwean family and they encouraged me to study law.”

Today, Ms Mavhinga supports young women engaging with government authorities to prevent gender-based violence and discrimination. ̽��ֱ��child-protection guidance she developed has been recognised as best practice and adopted by the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative.

Earlier in the day, Professor Rose, Julia Gillard and Fiona Mavhinga had joined the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, at the Mulberry School in London for the announcement of a new UK-US initiative to promote access to education for girls worldwide, in which REAL will be a partner alongside Camfed, the UK’s Department of International Development (DFID), USAID, and Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

̽��ֱ��Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre aims to promote education as an engine for sustainable development.

̽��ֱ��REAL centre builds on the Faculty of Education’s strong expertise in research of the highest quality that aims to address real problems and influence policy on the ground

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

DFID - UK

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes