Mitigating Summer Learning Loss by Improving Parental Engagement

Because children spend substantial time outside school, especially during long summer breaks, a potentially scalable strategy for addressing learning loss in low-income settings is to empower parents to sustain human capital accumulation during these periods. Yet parental engagement in these settings is often suboptimal due to two key frictions: parents rarely know their child’s true ability and often lack the resources and tools to support learning effectively. We design a 2×2 factorial randomized controlled trial to test whether improving parental engagement can mitigate summer learning loss among 1,200 students in Grades 2–4 across 8 schools in Pakistan. The two cross-randomized treatments address distinct parental constraints: (1) an Information arm provides personalized diagnostic Skill Profiles revealing children’s assessed numeracy levels relative to grade expectations, targeting belief inaccuracies; and (2) a Support arm provides structured TaRL-aligned workbooks and parent training, targeting resource and capacity constraints. The combined arm tests complementarity between information and support. Our primary outcome is foundational numeracy measured by the ASER-style assessment tool. Secondary outcomes include parental belief accuracy, time and monetary investment in children’s education, and managerial behaviors. We partner with Pakistan’s leading education assessment NGO and private schools to implement this project.