REACH KLI Grants 2017 (Theme: REACH for Reading)
All grantees from REACH’s third call for proposals focus on results-based funding for the provision of textbook and supplemental reading materials.
Bangladesh: Anuperona Book Challenge (Grantee: IREX)
The Anuperona Book Challenge will generate incentives for communities to meet the need for diverse materials in mother tongue languages and align with the Prime Minister’s Access to Information (A2I) project. This intervention is a results-based book creation activity that uses the Bloom software and will train a cadre of local content creators in Bangladesh with the tools and skills to create high quality supplementary readers in mother tongue languages. The resulting content will enhance the supply of books and be made readily available for digital distribution on the national Reading Hub. The KLI grant will fund a longitudinal, attitudinal survey to assess regional/national readiness for a results based competitive approach to content creation, the implementation of the book challenge, and a cost analysis on the use of results based competitive book challenge in Bangladesh.
Cambodia: Enhancing Book Distribution in Cambodia (Grantee: World Education)
Two key challenges to improving supply chains in Cambodia include (1) end-to-end visibility of data to drive the supply chain and (2) leadership and commitment throughout stakeholder organizations in establishing the importance of data to inform decisions and track performance. This intervention seeks to generate rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of a RBF intervention that incentivizes 400 school communities in 2 provinces and other key players in the supply chain in order to build a robust supply chain for the distribution of books and supplies to classrooms in Cambodia. This intervention will facilitate accountability and transparency in the book supply chain in Cambodia by increasing the visibility of end-to-end data in the supply chain and enable School Support Committees, school staff, parents, district administration and Ministry staff to better track the ordering and delivery of books. The KLI grant will fund a baseline survey that will define the design of the RBF intervention, the implementation of Track and Trace and post surveys to measure the availability of books post intervention.
South Africa: National Public-Private Storybook Development Initiative in South Africa (Grantee: Room to Read)
This intervention will facilitate a public-private partnership to develop national guidelines and create and distribute storybooks in support of the existing government Read to Lead campaign. The KLI grant will fund the creation of a national public-private working group to establish best practice recommendations for early-grade storybooks, the provision of technical assistance and capacity building to publishers of early grade storybooks and the distribution of over one hundred thousand books to government schools through a pooled procurement and ‘sliding scale’ model for book purchases.
This intervention seeks to generate rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of a RBF intervention that incentives each of three aforementioned intervention steps that will ultimately benefit the South African government and children in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Kwa-Zulu Natal.
Zambia: Evaluating Results Based Textbook Delivery Systems (World Bank)
The textbook delivery system in Zambia relies on centralized procurement at the national level followed by the transfer of books to District Education Board Secretaries (DEBS) offices at the regional level and then final delivery by DEBS offices to schools. This intervention will identify and evaluate the provision of results based delivery stipends to better align incentives so that local language textbooks reach their final destinations. The KLI grant will fund the roll out of two randomized results-based delivery stipends to district offices and private publishers aimed at identifying the most effective entity to be incentivized to achieve lower textbook shortfalls at the school level through improved textbook delivery/retrieval systems.
REACH KLI Grants 2017 (Theme: Meso-level Interventions)
All grantees from REACH’s fourth call for proposals focus on the meso-level of the education system.
Bangladesh, India, and Tanzania: Improving District-Level Decision-Making
In most countries, the ability of schools to function smoothly and access resources is mediated by District Education Officers (DEOs). However, very little is known about this level, especially with respect to how decisions are made and how success is evaluated. The KLI grant will fund the development of a novel (three-stage) field-based lab experiment using mobile phones that aims to better understand how DEOs in three different countries make decisions. The experiment will test assumptions about DEOs in order to generate information on how to better align their decision-making with results-based financing principles and to ensure that future results-based interventions targeted at DEOs are evidence based.
Colombia: Using School Information to Improve Service Delivery
This KLI grant is a continuation of a previous grant that supported the development of a results-based monitoring system in Colombia by creating a multi-dimensional set of indicators that focus on education quality. In this iteration, the system will be piloted in Bogotá, in order to transform three distinct aspects of decision making at the meso-level: targeting of programs, targeted support for school improvement plans, and allocation of resources.
Dominican Republic: Establishing Conditions to Improve the Performance of School Districts
The Dominican Republic has spent a decade decentralizing financial resources and responsibilities to school districts and schools with the hope of better responding to local needs. As part of this process, the Ministry of Education is seeking to improve sector management at the meso-level, by linking district-level performance agreements with the financial transfers they already receive. The KLI grant will support the design and implementation of these performance agreements.
India: Technology-Enabled Strengthening of Elementary School Monitoring Systems
In the state of Jharkhand the government has hired a cadre of Cluster/Block Resource Persons (CRPs/ BRPs) across the State as contract staff on a fixed remuneration. These individuals often have minimal professional experience and little oversight for their many tasks, which include visiting schools, acting as mentors to teachers, and galvanizing local participation through school committees. The KLI grant will support the improvement of quality assurance mechanisms by empowering and incentivizing CRPs/BRPs through on-the-job training and providing them with technological tools to collect real-time data.
Peru: Evaluating Performance-Based Career Path and Compensation Reforms for School Leaders
Improving the quality of the education system has been the focus of ongoing reforms in Peru. One aspect of those reforms has been focused on formulating a performance-based career path and compensation program for managerial positions in schools at all levels of basic education. The KLI grant will fund an impact evaluation to assess the implementation of a 2014 and 2016 system-wide meso-level change in policy which primarily focused on improving the management and organization of schools. The results of the evaluation will inform policy and strengthen the school leader appointment systems and other related education policies in Peru.