Retrospective vs prospective study4/29/2023 Pre-intervention data on school performance across all subjects was also examined. Test scores from schools that received the flipchart intervention were compared to the 89 comparison schools that did not receive any flipcharts. The data available for this study are the 19 scores from the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam, which is taken at the end of grade 8, and the scores of grade 6-8 students on practice exams taken throughout 19. In practice, grade 7 and 8 teachers had priority over the usage of the charts, and accounted for roughly 60 to 75 percent of total use. The charts were not kept in the classroom, but rather were brought in when they were relevant to the day’s lesson, and could therefore be used in more than one classroom on any given day. The intervention included flipcharts covering mathematics, geography, health, and two charts for science (agriculture and general science), as well as a teacher’s guide for science. In the prospective study, a Dutch NGO, ICS Africa, provided five sets of flipcharts-large, poster-sized charts with instructional material that can be mounted on walls or placed on easels-to each of 89 randomly selected Kenyan primary schools. This evaluation compares retrospective and prospective estimates of the effect of flipcharts in Kenyan primary schools. For example, if parents who provide better home environments (a typically unobserved characteristic) tend to organize to obtain more observed school inputs for their children, then estimates of the effect of those school inputs on test scores may be biased upwards. One potential weakness of this approach is that observable inputs like textbooks and flipcharts may be correlated with unobserved variables that affect educational outcomes. Most analyses of the effect of educational inputs are based on retrospective studies, which compare schools with different levels of inputs. Flipcharts may be particularly attractive in the rural Kenyan setting, where textbooks are too expensive for most students and many students have limited proficiency in English, the medium of instruction in Kenya and the language in which all Kenyan textbooks are written. In lower grades, textbooks are even rarer.įlipcharts are thought to promote learning in several ways, and may appeal to a broader range of students with different learning styles. Even textbooks are rare: in grade 8, which is selective, about 40 percent of students had textbooks in math and English, but 15 percent or less had textbooks in science and other subjects. Flipcharts and other visual aids are rare in schools in these areas, and less than one-third of the schools had any flipcharts before the study. The schools in this study are located in Busia and Teso, two neighboring agricultural districts on the border with Uganda, both of which have below-average income for Kenya. The vast majority of Kenyan children attend primary school, although in rural areas less than half complete their primary education.
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