Street Child

Street Child also known as Children in Crisis in Afghanistan runs more than 1600 community based classes in Hard Reach Districts of Zabul, Uruzgan and Baghlan provinces catering to more than 50,000 out of school children aged 6-9 years (50% girls). These classes are established as per the community based education (CBE) policy of Afghanistan and are set up in the same communities to which the children belong. Given the lack of well-trained and experienced teachers in these communities, novice teachers are often recruited on the “best available principle” as enunciated in the CBE policy.

Given the remoteness of location where the classes are established, the scale of operations, the budgetary constraints on refresher trainings, Street Child uses a combination of the following to improve teaching practices at scale with a focus on improving Oral Reading Fluency among Grade 1 children:

1. Structured Teacher Guides to scaffold teachers to proven teaching practices which aid in Pashto/Dari Language Development among children
2. Social workers (again recruited on the best available principle) to visit the 10-15 classes assigned to them once a month for coaching purpose
3. A tablet based offline Ed-Tech Intervention which assists social workers
   1. To make structured classroom observation on teaching practices and classroom observation and provide automatic tailored feedback (praise and tips to improve) based on input to the tablets
   2. To demonstrate effective teaching practices to teachers at school with the help of model videos targeting specific teaching practices
4. Based on the monthly submission of learning assessment data(EGRA like tests) and teaching practices data,  a Safe, In School and Learning Report is generated which is shared with the provincial team to provide the team a snapshot and detailed annexures as to where student and teachers are with respect to set benchmarks.

The intervention has been developed by the national team of Street Child in coordination with the provincial team and social workers. Social workers and provincial team during the pilot training at Kandahar did provide feedback on the tools being developed for structured observations and teacher feedback as well as the video viewing protocol to demonstrate effective teaching practices. Their feedback was incorporated and the tools were subsequently revised. Third Party evaluation of the project is currently ongoing where teachers feedback on the intervention is currently sought.

Based on the monthly classroom observations by social workers , we obtain teaching and learning data from social workers through their tablets. This includes a) fidelity to teaching practices as prescribed by the Structured Teacher Guide b) Learning levels of learners using timed assessments to measure Oral Reading Fluency Rates c) Availability of minimal infrastructure required for learning (eg: marker, whiteboard, notebooks, textbook). The data collection process is not suitable to demonstrate causality. 

On a monthly basis (25th of every month), we get the geo-tagged, time-stamped data on timed assessments from established community based classes. Oral Reading Fluency of children (correct words per minute) is calculated based on the data. At project level, the impact is tracked by the proportion of children in the project who are weak in fluency (less than 14 correct words per minute) average (14-37 correct words per minute) and good (greater than 37 correct words per minute).

Improving proficiency in Reading among children by scaffolding teachers through structured coaching in Hard to Reach Districts of Afghanistan.

While the social workers are trained on how to use the classroom observational rubric to observe the classes and provide feedback to teachers, the validity and reliability of the  field-level observations are yet to be researched. 

Similarly it is yet to be researched whether the tailored feedback provided to teachers by coaches and demonstration of effective teaching practices by screening videos on tablets did have any effect on the teaching practices of teachers. While teachers during qualitative interviews provide responses on the utility of such feedback and modelling, the evidence needs to be strengthened.

It would be useful if LEAP sprint helps us strengthen the cycle of instructional accountability of our education program, by helping us monitor and increase the reliability and validity of the classroom observation and feedback and also helping us monitor at scale the change in teaching practices due to such monthly coaching.