1. KiuFunza: Improving Early Grade Learning Outcomes Constantine Manda
2015 EAST AFRICA Evidence Summit
July 8-9, 2015 | Nairobi, kenya

2. How did the CG intervention work?
Outline
What is KiuFunza?
How did the CG intervention work?
How did we convince government to do this?
KF II

3. What is KiuFunza?
We made a big effort during our baseline to inform all stakeholders, at the school, community and government levels, of each intervention. We used many different information sharing techniques, from cartoon booklets sent home with students to formal letters to all levels of government. This was done for a number of reasons:
To ensure government buy in and understanding of the intervention in order to ease scale up efforts if intervention is found to be effective.
Increase accuracy of evaluation by ensuring all stakeholders completely understand the details of the intervention.

4. KiuFunza A portmanteau of two Kiswahili words Kiu which means thirst
Kujifunza which means to learn
Together KiuFunza means thirst to learn

5. Intervention Design
Capitation Grant
TZS 10,000 ($5) per student
Normal policy rules on spending, accountability apply
Cash on Delivery
Grades 1, 2 and 3
Test subjects: Kiswahili, English, Mathematics
TZS 5,000 ($2.5) per test passed is paid to responsible teacher; TZS 1,000 ($0.5) per test passed is paid to Head Teacher
Combination arm CG
Make payments (Tsh 10,000/enrolled pupil) directly into school bank account
2 equal installments of Tsh 5,000/enrolled pupil each
For quality improvement only (in line with current government policy re: use)
Accountability: comply with existing government protocol
Sharing information with communities
COD
Focused on early grade learning (Standard 1, 2 & 3)
Offer of incentive publicised at the beginning of school year/first school visit.
TZS 5,000/child if s/he performs Uwezo like (English, Swahili & Numeracy) tests up to standard
Maximum incentive per child: TZS 15,000
Plus TZS 1,000/child/subject to head teacher
Incentive paid after students assessed at end of yr.
Combo
A result of extensive consultation: incentive alone may not work where inputs are significantly inadequate/unavailable.
COD is implemented on top of the Capitation Grant program
School receive capitation grant for all pupils enrolled at the beginning of the year
COD focused on early grade (STD 1, 2 & 3) also implemented at school.
Monitor results for STD IV and VII: what changed?
Analysis:
Allows for a comparison between the impact of paying for inputs (current policy) and paying an incentive for outputs (innovation), while using combination intervention allows us to measure the interaction effect of both the current policy and the innovation.

6. RCT Design 11 Districts, randomly sampled 35 schools in each district
4 intervention groups in each district
COD: 7 schools
CG: 7 schools
COD & CG: 7 Schools
Control: 14 schools
Number of Schools per treatment group per district
COD
Yes No CG 7
14 (control)
This is a mostly representative sample across the country
Random assignment gives high internal validity
Random assignment in a representative sample gives external validity across Tanzania
While the sample is 10 districts, there is implementation in an 11th district outside of the evaluation.

7. Intervention districts

8. How did the CG intervention work?

9. CG Payments – Directly to School Accounts
2013 and 2014 CG Payments: TZS 2,286,109,000 ($1,143,055)
2013 CG Payments: TZS1,160,759,000 ($580,380)
2014 CG Payments: TZS1,125,350,000 ($562,675)
Informed district and national governments
Collected receipt of funds from all schools, district offices, and national government
Followed up on CG funds in Midline

13. Government to send CG directly

14. How did we convince government to do this?

15. Tz’s Minister of Education and I

16. No seriously
Our close connection to MOEVT through our consultant – Joseph Mmbando
Gov’t’s acceptance that kids are not learning
BRN agenda – President’s Office
Continuance information to gov’t on CG disbursements

17. No Impact on CG only, BUT Impact on Combo

18. Why scale up if NO Impact
Gov’t will do this anyway regardless of null result
Fred Finan: “easier to convince gov’t to change/alter a certain policy rather than discontinue or start new one.”
ALL schools in our KF II sample in COMBO world
During coming fiscal year when gov’t will scale up direct CG disbursements, our incentives treatment for 2014 and 2015 is essentially Incentives + CG
BRN also doing similar Incentives that coupled with gov’t’s CG should be COMBO effect

19. KiuFunza II (2014 and 2015) Dropped CG Race between
High-powered-but-complex incentives AND
Low-powered-but-simple incentives
Tournaments vs Levels, we call it
Re-sampled schools for balance
Tracking 4-year progress after Endline 2015
Complementarities results for KFI plus incentives race for KFII is legacy of KF

20. Ahsanteni Sana