Keeping Girls in School: Evaluating the Case Management System in Zambia

Last registered on June 11, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Keeping Girls in School: Evaluating the Case Management System in Zambia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012845
Initial registration date
June 05, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
June 11, 2025, 6:51 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

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Primary Investigator

Name
S ANUKRITI
Affiliation
The World Bank
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Kathleen Beegle
PI Affiliation
World Bank
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PI Name
Aanchal Bagga
PI Affiliation
Tufts University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-01-01
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Education, Gender, Health, Welfare
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study aims to evaluate the impact of a component of the Keeping Girls in School (KGS) project in Zambia on girls' education attainment and wellbeing. KGS provides education grants to households to enable them to meet the indirect costs of schooling (such as school supplies, uniforms, shoes, and books). It mainly targets adolescent girls and young women from households enrolled in Zambia's Social Cash Transfer program which provides bi-monthly cash transfers to households to cover basic needs. However, recent evidence reveals that despite providing education grants to beneficiaries, problems and challenges facing successful school progression for girls still persist. As a result, the KGS was augmented to include a Case Management System (CMS) to provide support to schools to prevent and respond to school dropout. The KGS CMS establishes a mechanism for early detection of risk factors associated with school dropout for girls and provide them with appropriate support to remain in school. The program aims to help diagnose the full set of risk factors for at-risk girls including teen pregnancy, and early marriage among other areas that affect the schooling of adolescent girls and young women and provide mitigation measures to prevent dropout. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with a large sample of KGS students from 7 districts in 3 provinces of Zambia. We randomly assign schools into three groups, two treatment arms and one control arm. The first treatment arm receives only the CMS (which includes basic academic clinics) while the second treatment arm receives the CMS plus enhanced Academic clinics (CMS+). The Academic clinics entail extra classes (outside of normal lesson time in school) designed to help prepare KGS students in Grades 9 and 12 for their national exams. The control group receives neither of the two treatments (no CMS).
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
ANUKRITI, S, Aanchal Bagga and Kathleen Beegle. 2025. "Keeping Girls in School: Evaluating the Case Management System in Zambia." AEA RCT Registry. June 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12845-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The CMS uses an early-warning system to identify girls at risk of school dropout and refers them to Guidance and Counseling (G&C) teachers within the school system. The G&C teachers serve as case managers and follow up with home visits to conduct detailed assessments and develop individualized care plans for the girl that may engage her family members/caregivers. The program also relies on a referral system for at-risk girls, which uses a locally developed (district level) directory of services which maps relevant services available in the district of the KGS school. The CMS provides bicycles to schools for the G&C teacher and other school staff to do more effective outreach to the families of at-risk girls. In addition, it establishes a KGS Girls' Peer Support Club at each school which meets weekly and is run by the G&C teacher at the school. The CMS also includes Academic Clinics which entail extra classes (outside of normal lesson time in school) designed to help prepare KGS students in Grades 9 and 12 for their national exams which must be passed for progression to the next school grade. These clinics take place 3 days per week for roughly 4 weeks prior to the national exams. The academic clinics cover the following main subject areas: English language, mathematics, biology, physics, and chemistry.

The CMS+ intervention includes the CMS as described above plus enhanced academic clinics. The enhanced academic clinics offer more frequent extra classes to exam-preparing grades in comparison to the basic academic clinics but cover the same subjects. While the basic clinics only start 4 weeks prior to the exam, the enhanced clinics are supposed to begin in early May (i.e., start of Term 2) and take place 4 days per week for roughly 30 weeks.
Intervention Start Date
2024-01-01
Intervention End Date
2024-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Grade 9 test scores for national exams taken in 2024
2. Progression to the subsequent grade in the following school year (i.e., 2025)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
1. School attendance in the 2024 school year
2. School performance in the 2024 school year
3. Educational and career aspirations

In addition, the up-take and use of CMS for KGS students in CMS treatment schools will be assessed to measure intensity of the intervention:
1. Services (counseling, referrals, and any other support) offered and received by KGS students.
2. Uptake of academic clinics
3. Participation in and perception of KGS Girls Peer Support Clubs.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The goal of this study is to examine the effects of the CMS program on academic outcomes of Grade 9 KGS girls with and without the enhanced academic clinics. To estimate these effects, we conduct a stratified randomized controlled trial at the school level. We started with a sample of 201 schools from the 7 study districts in 3 provinces of Zambia that had at least 5 KGS Grade 9 internal students enrolled in the school, according to the KGS MIS data from May 2023. This sample of 201 schools was divided into 14 strata based on the district where it is located (7 districts) and Grade 9 enrollment (above and below the median number of internal Grade 9 KGS students enrolled in school year 2023, which is 18). Thereafter, schools within each of the 14 strata were randomly allocated to one of three arms:
1. Control arm (65 schools)
2. CMS treatment arm (70 schools)
3. CMS+ treatment arm (66 schools)

There was no baseline survey conducted for this study. Instead, we collected administrative data on student enrollment, attendance, and academic performance in Term 3 of 2023 to confirm that randomization was balanced.

The IE shifted from a study of CMS rolling out at the start of the 2023 school year (and outcomes measured at the start of 2024 school year), to the 2024 school year (and outcomes measured at start of the 2025 school year). This was due to the delayed start of the CMS.

The endline survey will be conducted during the 2025 academic year to examine the impacts of the interventions on KGS girls who were enrolled in Grade 9 during the 2024 academic year.

The original school sample (of 201 schools) was selected on the basis of Grade 9 KGS student enrollment in 2023 obtained from the MIS data for Term 2 of 2023 school year. By 2024, 26 of these original sample of 201 schools no longer had a Grade 9 KGS student enrolled. This was due to the phasing down of new cohort enrollment into the KGS program.

As a result, the study sample is now comprised of 175 schools:
1. Control arm (59 schools)
2. CMS treatment arm (60 schools)
3. CMS+ treatment arm (56 schools)
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Random Assignment through the use of the STATA software
Randomization Unit
School level
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
175 schools with at least one Grade 9 KGS student enrolled in the 2024 school year
Sample size: planned number of observations
During the endline survey, we will try to interview all KGS girls who were enrolled in Grade 9 (internal) during the 2024 academic year in these 175 schools: 1,913 KGS students.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Control schools (no CMS)=59
Treatment 1 schools (CMS)=60
Treatment 2 schools (CMS+)=56

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
ERES CONVERGE IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-04-11
IRB Approval Number
2024-April 007
Analysis Plan