Empowering Students' Life Skills and Financial Education through Curriculum Renewal and Pedagogical Training - Evidence from The Gambia

This study will evaluate the implementation of a revised grade 5 curriculum in two regions of The Gambia. Furthermore, it will assess the effectiveness of teacher training and a community of practice (CoP) to consolidate the teachers' teaching skills. Based on a social financial education curriculum developed by Aflatoun International, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education of The Gambia revised school curriculum of Math, English, Science, and Social Studies to incorporate relevant concepts of FE and SEL. The study will evaluate the first implementation of the curriculum with 5th grade students in two regions in the Gambia, as well as pedagogical training for school teachers focusing on Active Learning Methodology.

Curriculum-infused life skills and financial education program
The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education of The Gambia (MoBSE) decided to mainstream social and financial education to address contemporary issues through school education and cultivate specific values in students. The method of mainstreaming the new curriculum is to infuse several existing subjects with content for life skills and financial education. MoBSE conducted curriculum revision to address five domains of life skills and financial competencies: personal understanding and exploration, rights and responsibilities, savings and spending, planning and budgeting, social and financial enterprise, water sanitation and hygiene, and social and emotional learning. The domains and the corresponding subjects through which the domain is addressed can be found below in Table 1. The modification of the curriculum to integrate life skills and financial education was an initiative of the MoBSE, based on the curriculum initially developed by the NGO Aflatoun International. The curriculum, named “Aflatoun,” had already been implemented in the context of The Gambia by NGO ChildFund The Gambia. This study will focus on the fifth grade, which is the first grade to implement this curriculum.

Basic teacher training
The basic teacher training aims to capacitate school teachers to implement the modified curriculum described above effectively. The training of teachers will be provided by trainers, who themselves receive training conducted by Aflatoun, ChildFund The Gambia, and MoBSE soon after the beginning of the academic year (October 2023). Teacher trainers are typically former teachers with distinguished experience or education specialists from ChildFund. Both the training of trainers and the teacher training will take place over a period of five days. It will include an introduction to the new curriculum, focusing on understanding it and practicing active learning methodology. The training targets five fifth-grade teachers of each school in the treatment condition teaching one of the subjects mentioned above.

Follow-up Teacher Workshop (Community of Practice)
The follow-up workshop is designed to consolidate the teaching methods covered in the initial training and to provide guidance for creating a community of practice in which teachers can support each other regarding the implementation of the new curriculum and the accompanying teaching methods. These workshops are facilitated by the cluster monitors of MoBSE, who are former teachers responsible for supervising the education practice in several assigned schools. The workshop will include peer coaching, adult learning, supportive communication, and other school and class observation methods that are intended to foster peer learning among teachers.

2023-10-23

2024-06-30

Students' confidence, future aspiration, financial competencies, problem solving skills, communication skills, and participation

We will measure four aspects of confidence, namely academic self-efficacy, general self-efficacy, self-esteem, and interpersonal confidence. In future aspirations, four components (educational, income, career, and marriage) are included. Under financial competencies, we will measure students' financial knowledge, financial savviness, saving behaviour, and gender-equitative attitude about household budgeting.

Students' empathy, time preference, perceived praise behavior by teachers, perceived relationship with teachers, literacy and numeracy, growth mindset, beliefs about social mobility, knowledge and attitude about rights and responsibilities

Our study sample includes 2700 children in 5th grade from 90 schools from two provinces of The Gambia. After the baseline data collection, the schools will be randomly assigned to one of the two treatment groups or the control group, with an equal chance of selection. Schools in the first intervention group will receive the revised curriculum, and teachers will participate in 5 days training in the beginning of the academic year. In the second intervention group, teachers will be engaged in follow-up training workshop, in addition to the same intervention in the first treatment group. Schools in the control group will receive no intervention until end-line data collection.

The randomized control trial is designed to examine the causal effects of the infused life skills and financial education curriculum on students and teachers and to compare the effectiveness of the follow-up teacher training. First, 90 schools were identified for this study from Region 3 and Region 4 of The Gambia. Those two regions were chosen because ChildFund The Gambia has yet to implement a similar social financial education program in those regions. Schools were chosen by the ministry (MoBSE) and ChildFund.　

During baseline and endline data collection, 30 randomly selected students from the 90 selected schools will be surveyed, adding up to 2,700 students (30 students per school on average). Survey respondents will be selected if they are between 10 and 14 years old (the target age for the Aflatoun curriculum) and attend fifth grade. (Fifth-grade standard).

After the baseline data collection, the listed schools will be randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups or the control group, with an equal chance of selection. Schools in the first intervention group (low-intensity arm) will be introduced to the new curriculum, and teachers will participate in basic training. Schools in the second intervention group (high-intensity arm) will also be introduced to the new curriculum, and teachers will participate in the basic training and participate in the follow-up workshops. In the control group, no new curriculum is introduced, and teachers receive no training. As mentioned above, five teachers in charge of fifth-grade students will participate in the training. Therefore, all fifth-grade students in the two intervention groups are expected to be taught by teachers who received the training

Randomization is conducted in office by a computer using Stata software.

The randomization will be clustered on the school level and stratified by the two regions using Stata software.

Yes

90 schools

2700 students

30 schools control, 30 schools revised curriculum and teacher training, 30 schools revised curriculum, teacher training, and follow-up training workshop