The Whole School Development & The School Grant The case of The Gambia

1. The Whole School Development&The School GrantThe case of The Gambia Prepared by the World Bank Impact Evaluation Team Contacts for questions about these data: Moussa P. Blimpo: moussa.blimpo@gmail.com David Evans: devans2@worldbank.org

2. Country Overview • Pop -1.5m (2003) • Area -12000 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 resultsSchool 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 • Improvement: Record keeping, Adoption of WSD concepts

9. Impact of WSD student learning and performance • 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. MoBSE March 2010 Teacher content knowledgeFindings • 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.

13. MoBSE March 2010 Teacher content knowledgeIssues • 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 3rd Education Program

14. MoBSE March 2010 Teacher content knowledgeAreas 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