The Whole School Development & The School Grant The case of The Gambia Prepared by the World Bank Impact Evaluation Team Contacts for questions about these data: Moussa P. Blimpo: David Evans:

2 Country Overview ►Pop -1.5m (2003) ►Area sq km (400 x 30 km)

3 Set up & description  Pilot in schools from Regions 2, 3, 4, 6 –Region 1: very distinctive –Region 5: already received WSD (round 1)  Randomly assign clusters of schools to one of three groups –Group 1: Receive WSD + Grant (90 schools) –Group 2: Receive Grant only (90 schools) –Group 3: Comparison group (90 schools)

4 Baseline results School management  Poor records keeping  49% of head teachers could not shows records of school expenses.  58% could not show written staff code of conduct and 59% could not show records of classroom observations.  48% could not show a written school development plan.  All have PTAs but 65% of them are not funded  12% of teachers absent on the day of the survey in regions 2 and 6 up to 30% in region 4.  32% of the teachers missed at least 1 day during the week prior to the survey.  20% of students absent in regions 2, 3, and 4; nearly 40% in region 6.

5 Baseline resiults: Literacy Children have to read 45 wpm to understand…

6 Lessons from the Baseline  Schools infrastructures in good conditions  Record keeping: Can be improved  Performance (Standardized test): Poor  Significant learning across grades (3 & 5)  Absenteeism: Serious problem  Other aspects: Corporal punishment

7 Group comparison

8 Impact of WSD (I) School Management WSDControl Has no staff code of conduct Did not adopt PTA constitution Number of Meetings with community/PTA Record of school policy Established statutory committees 1. Leadership and Management Community Participation Curriculum Management Teachers professional development Teaching and learning resources Learners’ welfare and school environment88 71 Number of schools8789  Improvement: Record keeping, Adoption of WSD concepts

9 Impact of WSD student learning and performance WSDControl Overall score Math score Literacy score Number of students  No significant impact on students' learning (yet?)

10 Conclusion (WSD)  Significant positive impact on school functioning (Record keeping, school management, etc.)  No early impact on students performance. Negative impact on math score.  May be too early to say  Negative impact may be due to time spent on WSD implementation  Second follow up on the way

11 Teacher Content Knowledge  At the request of the MoBSE, a literacy and numeracy assessment of teachers was included in one of the follow-up surveys for the impact evaluation  Exercise carried out in June 2009 in Regions 2, 3, 4, and 6  Goals:  Help determine teachers’ strengths and weaknesses in term of content knowledge  Inform the teacher training institutions

12 Teacher content knowledge Findings A teacher assessment of 1,049 teachers was recently conducted in literacy (vocabulary, missing words, and reading comprehension) and math. The initial test was intended for students in Grades 4 and 6, with a few more difficult questions added for the teacher assessment. The overall results show that: – only 2.6 percent of the teachers scored at least 90%; –66 percent scored less than 75%, and – 2 percent less than 50%. The teacher scores indicate serious gaps in their content knowledge. 3/13/201612MoBSE March 2010

13 Teacher content knowledge Issues Teacher Quality i.e. Content Knowledge and Pedagogy Issues WB mobilize US $ 5.5 Million & support the Gambia The proposed additional financing will complement the original project activities under the 3 rd Education Program 3/13/201613MoBSE March 2010

14 Teacher content knowledge Areas of Priority Issue 1: teachers' content knowledge and Pedagogy Issue 2: how best to identify key teachers for this project and then support them Issue 3 : to ensure that T+L Centre is primarily about T+L rather than technology Issue 4: to ensure that within the project a healthy balance is struck by the drivers of in-service education (MoBSE) and the service providers of the Centre for T+L Issue 5: Ensure that bottom-up, school based in-service complements work at hub and cluster levels 3/13/201614MoBSE March 2010