Young Lives school surveys in 2016-17: school effectiveness research design
This academic year (2016-17) we will be conducting a further round of school effectiveness surveys in Ethiopia, India and Vietnam. The key focus areas for the surveys are:
- Benchmarking levels of student attainment and progress in key learning domains;
- Effects of school and teacher quality, and school effectiveness;
- Educational transitions at age 15.
The 2016-17 school surveys focus on the level of schooling accessed by 15-year-olds in each country, as this is the current age of the Young Lives Younger Cohort children. This means the survey will include Grade 7 and 8 students in Ethiopia (upper primary level), Grade 9 students in India (lower secondary level), and Grade 10 students in Vietnam (upper secondary level).
We have designed the surveys with a broadly similar school effectiveness research design to that used in the Vietnam and Ethiopia primary school surveys. Following this design, cognitive tests (Maths and English) will be administered to students at the beginning of the school year (Wave 1) and the end of the school year (Wave 2), accompanied by background instruments and psychosocial measures (on academic self-concept, motivation and so on) which will collect data to contextualise the learning progress made by students. A one-off Transferable Skills test will also take place at the end of the school year. This ‘repeated measures’ design, with a cognitive test at the beginning and end of the school year, will allow us to measure students’ progress through the course of the year, as well as their learning levels. Through undertaking ‘value-added’ analysis where prior attainment and background effects are controlled for, we hope to be able to attribute some of this learning progress to factors at school, teacher and classroom level.
Sampling design
In all three countries, the school surveys taking place this year will collect data from schools within the twenty Young Lives sentinel sites. In Ethiopia, an additional ten sites in Somali and Afar will also be included (as they were in the primary school survey in 2012-13) to further reflect the cultural and geographic diversity of the country. The sampling design varies slightly in each country to reflect the research priorities and educational context in each country, and is as follows:
- Ethiopia: 62 upper primary schools, approx. 12,000 students
- India: 212 secondary schools, approx. 12,000 students
- Vietnam: 55 upper secondary schools, approx. 9,000 students
In India, where there are a larger number of smaller schools, the sample is stratified by school type (government, tribal/social welfare, private aided, private unaided), with the number of schools selected proportional to the number of schools in each site. In Vietnam and Ethiopia, where there are a smaller number of larger schools, a census sampling approach is used, covering all schools with the appropriate grades in each site.