Abstract
Evidence suggests that traumatic events, such as pandemics and wars, can impact children’s learning, socio-emotional development, and sense of protection (Quintana-Domeque and Ródenas-Serrano, 2017; Almond et al. 2018). Ukraine’s education system faces critical constraints in providing high-quality education to its students on their path toward recovery after disruptions to schooling and learning due to years of pandemic-related school closures. While children in many countries have gone back to school, the return to in-person education has been hindered by a lack of security, significant student and teacher displacement, and school damages posed by 6 months of the Russian invasion. Currently, learning losses in Ukraine are estimated to be over one year (Angrist et al, 2022), with learning outcomes falling below the lowest-performing countries in Europe which will have substantial impacts on human capital development in the country. To mitigate the impact of these traumatic events on children, the Ukrainian education system must find new strategies for supporting learning recovery and increasing learning equity while children are not able to return to in-person schooling.
High dosage small group instructional tutoring can be a powerful strategy to improve learning outcomes and cognitive and socioemotional skills, as it offers students a massive increase in personalized instruction, enabling teaching at the right level (Banerjee et al., 2015). To test the effectiveness of these programs in a conflict-affected setting, we study a tutoring program offering supplemental learning in math and Ukrainian language and psychosocial support. The target population of the tutoring program is Ukrainian students in grades 5 to 10 who are seeking supplemental support beyond the standard online schooling schedule. Initially, students are placed in groups of 3 and will receive 3 hours of tutoring per week for 6 weeks by paid-for tutors through the Edmodo online platform. The implementing partner is Teach for Ukraine.
The impact evaluation will include three waves, through which we will test for the effectiveness of varying certain attributes, including program length, group size, content allocation, group composition by ability, and tutors as role models. Students will be recruited in each wave. All waves will have one control and one treatment group. Waves 2 and 3 will have an additional group composed of students who participated in the control group in the previous wave who will receive the treatment. In this group, we will either test the effect of group composition or pilot an attribute to be tested in the following wave.
The effects of the tutoring program will be measured in math and Ukrainian language test scores and socioemotional skills. As secondary outcomes, we will measure the effects of the intervention on expectations, mental health, time use, attendance to the tutoring activities, and attitudes towards tutoring.