ChildHopeUK’s Girls Education Challenge Project is supporting 17,500 Ethiopian girls marginalised by early marriage, risky migration, street-involvement, and domestic work to remain in school and learn numeracy, literacy and... [ view full abstract ]
ChildHopeUK’s Girls Education Challenge Project is supporting 17,500 Ethiopian girls marginalised by early marriage, risky migration, street-involvement, and domestic work to remain in school and learn numeracy, literacy and self-efficacy skills.
To evaluate the impact of the project we conducted Midline and Endline quasi-experimental Evaluations for comparing the results between treatment and control groups of a sample of 1,950 girls. Different quantitative analysis were used for this purpose. First, we assessed how outcomes changed for the treatment and control groups over time and tested whether changes are statistically significant (using paired t-tests). Finally, DiD analysis was then conducted to assess the causal effect of the program.
We found impact on numeracy scores, attendance rates, and Self-efficacy and self-esteem scores for the girls on the treatment group. When we explored all the results by groups of marginalised girls, we found that girls from poorer backgrounds are benefiting with higher positive impacts for maths and self-esteem outcomes. Girls who are exposed to labour exploitation and risky migration show lower and negative effects on literacy, however, they show much larger positive impacts on self-esteem. When we analysed the effects of the main interventions on the main outcomes, we found that after-class tutorials are positive drivers of attendance rates and numeracy scores. The number of teachers trained in pedagogy is a positive driver of literacy scores, and provision of reading corners is a positive driver of attendance. The Letter-Link intervention for children to report abuse is and positively associated with attendance and literacy scores.
We will explore the limitations of the evaluation approach especially for measuring outcomes within marginalised girls. We will discuss alternatives to overcome those challenges for the second phase of the GEC project (2017 – 2021) where the girls will transition to secondary education and the labour market.
