Targeted Instruction Program

Despite a rise in school enrollments, a learning crisis plagues the Pakistani education system in which most students lack foundational skills even after a number of years of schooling. Low average learning and high learning inequality in Pakistan, especially at the primary level, is expected to worsen because of COVID-induced household shocks and school closures. If these losses are not mitigated, they will compound over time causing children, particularly from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, to perform poorly, disengage and even drop out. 

The specially designed Targeted Instruction Program (TIP) aims to help primary-level students catch up to their grade level by mastering foundational skills in Urdu, Math and English. Acquisition of these foundational skills will support students’ mastery of other subjects.

This technology supported, teacher-led program is formally evaluated in 1250 primary-level public schools in the two largest districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – Peshawar and Mardan – targeting 250,000 students and approximately 7000 teachers and head teachers. Out of these, 250 are pure control schools where the program is not administered. 

The programme is administered by existing school teachers using specially designed assessments and teaching learning materials as well as training resources. A software that can be easily accessed on a smartphone / tablet / computer and even offline (after the initial login) has been developed, which is a fast grading tool and integrates the above-mentioned components to support teachers and reduce the administrative burden on them. 

Findings

This is a first ever classroom-invasive, technology enabled COVID recovery large scale pilot program aimed at helping public primary students catch up to their grade levels and build foundational skills in Urdu, Math and English. 

Curriculum-aligned version of Targeted Instruction that is administered through existing teachers who are provided training, ready to use tools, and post-training support. 

• Study is currently underway in 1250 public schools in Mardan and Peshawar
• Buy-in from political and bureaucratic leadership at federal and KP provincial levels. Interest in scaling the program across Pakistan as part of a donor-supported government program
  • Regular curriculum of Math, English and Urdu suspended for 40 days during school hours to allow TIP classes
  • Revised curriculum notified and school-level monitoring by external field officers (from govt. department) to be conducted on that
  • Materials approved for use in schools
• Initial (post-COVID) needs assessment in ICT with 1292 students in formal and non formal public schools shows:
  • 99% of grades 1-5 students in formal and non formal schools in ICT cannot form basic sentences in English even if they can recognise words
  • 81% of Grade 5 students need remediation in Math while 10% have not mastered level 1 Math content
  • can read and write paragraphs in Urdu while 5% still cannot read words and 25% cannot form sentences
• Initial (post-COVID) needs assessment in KP with ~960 students in formal public schools shows:
  • Most students’ mastery levels are behind their actual grades
  • Over a quarter of the students tested are one level behind their actual grades in all three subjects. Just under one quarter of students tested are 2 levels behind their actual grades in all 3 subjects
  • 9 out of every 10 children tested need remediation in English
  • 8 out of every 10 children tested need remediation in Urdu
  • 8 out of every 10 children tested need remediation in Math
• 250,000 students tested; 7300 teachers surveyed; 6000 teachers, head teachers and government officials trained; and 144 Master Trainers trained

Key Numbers & Impact
2 cycles of the program pre-pilot in 8 NGO schools show drastic improvement in student test scores, with the caveat that there was no control group. Initial results show significant improvement in student test scores of ~0.5 standard deviations in scores for students assigned level after completion of the first cycle, despite intermittent school closures.