Investment for education in emergencies:a review of the evidence

Sébastien Hine – Research Assistant, Development Progress, ODI

17th September 2015

Commissioned by

Research questions and methodology

Key research areas• Community prioritisation• Impact of emergencies on education• Returns to investment in education in

emergencies• Financing of education in emergencies

Methodology• Rigorous literature review using DFID’s

How to Note: Assessing the Strength of Evidence

• Case-studies on Haiti (earthquake) and DRC (violent conflict)

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Children in primary school rehabilitated following flooding in Pakistan, 2010

Literature mapping

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Theme Total

Emergency type Location

Natural disaster Conflict Emergencie

s broadly

Not emergency specific but

covering LICS/MICS

Country specific

Multi-country

Prioritisation 15 5 10 0 0 14 1

Impact 13 2 10 1 0 2 11

Returns 5 0 0 0 5 1 4

Financing 20 3 2 12 3 6 14

Total 53 10 22 13 8 23 30

Community prioritisation of education in emergencies

Is education seen as a ‘high priority’ amongst emergency affected populations?

• Moderate body of evidence across a variety of emergency types, finds that education is a top priority for communities affected by emergencies

• Types of research include surveys of affected populations, analysis of unconditional cash transfer spending, and public opinion polls

• Key pieces of research:– Pierre (2010) – Haitians talk about rebuilding the country after the January 12, 2010

earthquake– Plan (2010) – Anticipating the future: Children and young people’s voices in Haiti’s PDNA– Syria (IFRC, 2012) – Syrian Refugees living in the Community in Jordan– DRC (Aker, 2013) – Cash or Coupons? Testing the Impacts of Cash versus Vouchers in DRC

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Impact of emergencies on education

To what extent is schooling disrupted by different types of emergencies?

• Small body of evidence, concentrating on conflict mostly, finds that emergencies clearly disrupt education, but:– Fragility (weak education system) can play an important explanatory role– Most research relies on national enrolment, very little sub-national level analysis– Nothing on learning outcomes

• Key pieces of research:– EPDC (2010) - The effect of violent conflict on the primary education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,

Pakistan– Shields & Paulson (2014) - 'Development in reverse'? A longitudinal analysis of armed conflict,

fragility and school enrolment

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Costs of emergencies to education

What are the economic and human capital costs of natural disasters and conflict on education systems?

• Very small body of evidence, finds potentially huge knock-on effects of missed education due to emergencies:– Including destruction of infrastructure, costs of training new staff, & lost returns to that education– Up to 1.3% and 1.7% of GDP in Pakistan and DRC respectively

• Broader literature on returns to education in LICs could be relevant to these contexts

• Key pieces of research:– Jones and Naylor (2014) - The quantitative impact of armed conflict on education: counting the

human and financial costs– Baez et al. (2010) - Do Natural Disasters Affect Human Capital? An Assessment Based on

Existing Empirical Evidence

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Financing sources

Who and what is typically funded by different sources? Do the channels tend to be complementary or are there gaps?

• Moderate body of evidence with very patchy coverage. Lack of knowledge regarding interactions between different sources of funding.

• Financing for EiE can be broken down into domestic, household, development assistance and humanitarian aid. Only detailed analysis is of humanitarian aid

• Key pieces of research:– Global Education Cluster (2014) - Education Cannot Wait: Financing Education in Emergencies

Challenges and Opportunities– UNESCO EFA GMR (2014) - Aid reductions threaten education goals

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Case-studies

Haiti, 2010 earthquake and DRC, ongoing conflict

• Education was a high priority for communities in both countries

• Humanitarian funding to education varied:– Haiti: 99% requests met and 8% of all humanitarian funding in first year– DRC: 17% requests met and 1.1% of all humanitarian funding since 2000

• ODA significant to both countries, mostly focused on primary education

• Diaspora remittances are likely to be high, but research lacking

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Conclusions

1. Existing evidence shows that communities, and children especially, prioritise education over and above a number of other issues in contexts of emergency.

2. While emergencies clearly disrupt education, beyond some macro-level estimates at global and country levels, it is difficult to say by how much.

3. The longer term economic and human capital costs of emergencies to education, while thinly researched, include estimates that reach the hundreds of millions – and even billions – of dollars.

4. Though clear that low levels of humanitarian aid is going to education in emergencies, there is limited understanding of how existing funding catalyses or complements other sources.

5. Haiti and DRC illustrate that even when education is a high priority for communities after emergencies, funding for the sector can be very erratic.

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Research gaps and future directions

1. Greater investment in data

2. Systems research focused on specific countries and regions

3. Longitudinal research

4. Research beyond access issues and looking at learning outcomes

5. Research on post-primary education

6. Need for economics of education in emergencies research

7. Returns to investment on different levels of education

8. Funding sources beyond humanitarian

9. Incentives of different actors

10. Theory of change for education in emergencies

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ODI is the UK’s leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues. We aim to inspire and inform policy and practice to reduce poverty by locking together high-quality applied research and practical policy advice.

The views presented here are those of the speaker, and do not necessarily represent the views of ODI or our partners.

Overseas Development Institute

203 Blackfriars Road, London, SE1 8NJ

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www.odi.org.uk

s.hine@odi.org.uk

What Works to Promote Children’s Educational Access,

Quality of Learning, and Wellbeing in Crisis-Affected Contexts

Dana Burde, PhD

New York University, and

Journal on Education in Emergencies

dana.burde@nyu.edu; www.danaburde.com

and

Ozen Guven, Jo Kelcey,

Heddy Lahmann, and Khaled Al-Abbadi

Why Conduct Empirical Research in Challenging Environments?

• Because many children have abysmal prospects

• Because we spend large amounts of money on aid

• Because we think rigorous research can help guide education policy and improve lives

Outline

• Evidence-based Approaches: – Definition– Evaluating evidence to show cause and effect relationships

• State of the evidence from EiE interventions– Methods: Search criteria– Evidence for access, quality, well-being among EiE

interventions – Research gaps and future research

• Recommendations

What is an Evidence-Based Approach?

When Chris Whitty (Chief Scientific Advisor and Director Research & Evidence, DFID) was receiving his medical training, the last senior doctors to oppose evidence-based medicine were nearing retirement. As Chris tells it, they would say:

“This evidence-based medicine fad won’t last. Every patient is different, every family situation is unique; how can you generalise from a mass of data to the complexity of the human situation.”

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/evidence-debate-continues-chris-whitty-and-stefan-dercon-respond-dfid

(January 2013)

What is a Rigorous Evidence-Based Approach?

Only RCTs? What else qualifies? How do we know?

• e.g., Regression discontinuity designs

Method depends on the question, also depends on resources available

Well-designed, empirical qualitative studies, can point us in the right direction, explain why and how causal mechanisms work, and provide crucial contextual data

But purists argue that for understanding impact, there’s nothing like an RCT, otherwise known as an impact evaluation

EiE Evidence Review (with Ozen Guven, Jo Kelcey, Heddy Lahmann, and

Khaled Al-Abbadi)

We define crises as emergencies caused by violent conflict, natural disaster, or both.

We define educational access as “the opportunity to enrol, attend, and complete formal or nonformal education programmes” (INEE, 2010, p. 115);

quality of learning as it relates to both academic achievement and attitudes (e.g., tolerance); and

wellbeing as holistic health, including physical, emotional, social, and cognitive characteristics.

EiE Evidence Review

Our primary goal is threefold:

(1) to assess the strength and quantity of the existing evidence of effective practices and programme interventions in countries and regions affected by crises;

(2) identify relevant and robust evidence of effective interventions from high-, middle-, and low-income countries to serve as a point of departure for future research; and

(3) develop conceptual models that suggest pathways and mechanisms to test in future research.

EiE Evidence Review: Methods

Identified thousands of academic articles through multiple database searches using relevant key terms.

Narrowed our search using a purposive sampling approach and a manual review of references of relevant articles, yielding a total of 251 articles.

We selected grey literature through searching well-known websites, for example, the Abdul Latif Jameel-Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and the World Bank, both sources with many experimental studies.

In addition, we reviewed articles collected by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) for their database of experimental research (149) and systematic reviews of literature (16) relevant to education in emergencies.

Finally, all members of the Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) steering group and listserv were invited to send research to include.

The total number of studies included in this review is 184.

EiE Evidence Review: Key Findings

Absence of robust evidence of impact, in the way defined here: Our review returned 5 rigorous experimental studies and 8 quasi-experimental studies conducted in countries affected by crises:

•3 assess the effects of interventions on children’s educational access•4 on quality of learning, and •6 on wellbeing

Among these, even fewer rigorous studies (6) exist that take context (disaster or conflict) into account in the research design.

Large number of strong observational designs: The observational studies presented here include both detailed ethnographic and case studies analysed qualitatively as well as data collected via surveys, pre- and post-test designs, and analysed statistically.

Key Findings on Access

• Strong evidence supports the use of community-based education to increase access to education, especially for girls at the primary level.

• Providing female teachers, girls-only schools, accelerated learning programmes, and approaches to distance learning for primary, over-age, and secondary students also show promise, but these findings are based on observational studies.

• Where conflict-affected populations have been displaced and are living in protracted or post-conflict environments, more research is necessary to determine the best way to expand access rapidly to large numbers of refugee children.

• In countries or regions affected by disasters, rigorous research assessing interventions to promote educational access is notably absent from the literature.

Key Findings on Quality

Includes studies designed to understand quality as it affects both academic achievement and attitudes (e.g., tolerance).

Strong evidence supports the use of community-based education and community participatory monitoring to increase academic achievement at the primary school level.

Additional promising interventions include: tailored training for teachers with limited qualifications, and mobile phone technology and radio to deliver lessons/lesson plans.

Where populations are living in protracted or post-conflict contexts, peace education activities that require contact between groups show promise in the short term.

Promising observational evidence shows that equal educational access and greater national levels of educational attainment may limit participation in militancy or extremism, but these results are mixed.

No robust evidence shows the best ways education may counter violent extremism.

Key Findings on Well-BeingIn countries or regions affected by acute conflict, there is promising evidence to support community negotiations to protect schools, students, and teachers from attack.

In countries or regions where populations are living in protracted, post-conflict, or disaster contexts, there is strong evidence to support creative arts and play therapies, early childhood development, and provision of extra services to the most vulnerable (especially girls and younger children) in order to improve wellbeing.

Emerging evidence also suggests that conflict-affected children and youth respond less well, and sometime adversely, to therapies that focus on trauma rather than on daily stressors.

Emerging evidence shows that for the majority of conflict- or disaster-affected children and youth, school routines improve mental health and resilience.

Key Findings on GirlsAlthough many studies disaggregate findings between boys and girls, none of the studies that were returned in our search were designed to focus explicitly on girls.

Still, one strong intervention emerges from the literature: community-based education improves girls’ access.

In contrast, mental health and similar interventions for girls appear to have mixed effects.

Much more research is necessary to understand how girls and boys respond differently to interventions that promote access, quality of learning, and wellbeing.

Key Findings on YouthFew studies conducted in crisis settings focused explicitly on youth (3 wellbeing, 10 quality, 1 access).

Those that did are mainly concentrated in the quality section and mainly relate to the violence and peace education findings noted above.

Research on access to secondary school and vocational training for youth is extremely limited. More research is critical.

Key Findings on Children with Disabilities and on Refugees

Disabilities: Our searches returned no studies on children with disabilities conducted in crisis settings or with children affected by crises that met our methodological standards for inclusion. This is striking given the rates of exposure among children in crisis contexts to physical and emotional risk.

Refugees: Although there is strong emerging evidence on how to provide psychosocial support to refugee children and youth (described above), there is very limited evidence on the best ways to improve access.

RecommendationsInvest in rigorous research to learn more about the best interventions to support educational access, quality of learning, and wellbeing for refugee children and youth, for girls, and for children with disabilities.

Invest in programming and rigorous research on disaster risk reduction in middle- and low- income and conflict-affected countries.

Invest in conducting a systematic review of existing education in emergencies (EiE) programme interventions in countries and regions affected by crises in order to identify the most common programmes in a given context, and (continue to) fund practitioners and academics to work together to conduct rigorous research in these locations.

Recommendations• Invest in research on mobile phone teaching and

learning platforms and other distance learning innovations that show promise and are likely to be particularly important to highly mobile, hard-to-reach populations affected by conflict and crisis.

• Continue to invest in early childhood development and community-based education (CBE) programmes that are well-structured and well-managed; continue to conduct research on these programmes to understand variations among early childhood development (ECD) programmes and long-term effects of CBE.

‘Whether and How?’ History education about recent and ongoing conflictA review of researchJulia Paulson, Bath Spa UniversityUKFIET 2015

Curriculum and conflict• INEE 2010 Minimum

Standard = “culturally, socially and linguistically relevant curricula.”

• INEE 2010 Guidance Notes on Teaching and Learning = “immediate need” to remove “conflict-inciting materials and ideologically-loaded content.”

HOW (AND WHETHER) TO DEAL WITH HISTORY OF RECENT VIOLENT CONFLICT?

✔ Case studies + edited collections✗ Review of existing research + analysis of trends

History education• Traditional

approach: linear national narrative

• Key site for:• Constructing identity• Transmitting

collective memory• Shaping ‘imagined

communities

• Can contribute towards conflict

• Debate + change:• Collective memory

move ‘from indoctrination to inspiration’ (Bellino 2014)

• ‘Enquiry-based, multi-perspective approach’ (McCully 2012)

• ‘De-nationalisation’ (Hansen 2012) +

‘social-sciencization’ (Hyman 2007)

Framework for analysis• “The debate is not just about whether children should be taught to

remember the past, but also about how the past is interpreted” • Zemblyas and Beckerman 2008, 126

• “Profound controversy regarding the function of history teaching in education systems” • Carretero et al 2012, 1

Research questions

1)How is history education approached?2)Is recent/ongoing conflict part of history

curriculum? 3)If yes, how is it approached?

Review of research

• Configurative review (Gough et al. 2012)

• Conflict ended since 1990 or ongoing

• Focused on an education system

• EBSCO Host, JSTOR + Google Scholar searches

• 42 studies• 11 countries

• Bosnia and Herzegovina• Cyprus• Guatemala• Israel/Palestine• Lebanon• Northern Ireland• Peru• Rwanda• South Africa • Sri Lanka• Yemen

Findings

• How is history education approached?

• History in Social Studies:• Guatemala• Peru• South Africa• Rwanda (primary education)• Yemen

• National narrative: • Bosnia-Herzegovina• Israel• Cyprus• Lebanon • Rwanda (secondary education)• Sri Lanka

• Disciplinary approach: • Northern Ireland • (Northern Cyprus)

Findings

• Is recent/ongoing conflict part of history curriculum?

• Yes:• Peru• Israel• Cyprus • Yemen

• Yes, after delay: • Rwanda • South Africa

• No: • Sri Lanka• Lebanon• Guatemala• Northern Ireland (compulsory)• BiH (no common curriculum)

‘… silent reproduction of conflict’ Sanchez Meertens 2013, 259 on Sri Lanka

Students ‘display keen awareness of civil war events’ despite ‘vacuum’ of official historyVan Ommering 2014, 3 on Lebanon

Findings• How is recent/ongoing

conflict approached in curriculum?

• Conflict as exception• Guatemala• Peru• South Africa

• Mythical, unified past• Rwanda• Yemen

• Ethno-nationalist narrative• Cyprus• Israel• Bosnia-Herzegovina

Issues + potential• Teachers (pedagogy,

training and identity)

• Segregated learners

• Controversy, protest + political backlash

• Facing history and ourselves

• Transitional justice

• Common textbooks

Conclusions• Young people have knowledge of recent/ongoing conflict even when

not part of curriculum

• Though examples of small scale promising practice exist, practice across education systems does not appear to contribute towards peacebuilding

• Potential of ‘active past’ approaches identified by researchers but largely untested in practice