Behavioural Barriers to Parental Engagement and Student Learning Outcomes in Sindh: Evidence from a Behavioural Diagnostic and Randomised Evaluation in Khairpur District

Our intervention design includes three different components that directly map onto the behavioural barriers identified through the diagnostic. The first component is a printed booklet offering a guide on simple, age appropriate, and easy to do activities that parents can carry out at home with their children to improve their basic numeracy and literacy skills. The booklet is organised into weekly routines and accompanied by clear, visual instructions.
The booklet will be disseminated to parents through an in person orientation delivered through a local facilitator, during which parents will be introduced to the booklet, the logic of the programme, and expectations around their participation. This orientation is intended both to strengthen parents’ understanding and motivation and to mitigate attrition risk by establishing an early, face to face relationship between families and the programme. The booklet will address the knowledge barrier.
The second component consists of weekly IVR (interactive voice response) calls, which serve as recurring prompts for parents to undertake the activities suggested in the booklet. These automated reminder calls are designed to reduce the retention barrier by keeping children’s learning “top of mind” despite parents’ busy and competing schedules, and by nudging them to convert intention into action at regular intervals. This addresses the memory and attention barrier.
The third component will include a series of messaging to parents embedded within the orientation and IVR to address the beliefs about consequences barrier. Parents will be given specific information from the baseline data about the potential benefits of parental engagement by parents of a similar background as theirs.

2026-05-01

2026-08-15

Our key outcome variables are categorized into the main targeted behavior and final
outcomes.
Targeted Behavior: Our primary targeted behavior is parental engagement. We will
measure this through parental engagement in both home-based and school-based
activities.
Final Outcomes: These represent the ultimate impact on students and include:
1) Student retention.
2) Student cognitive skills , specifically literacy and numeracy skills.
3) Student non-cognitive skills , measured by three individual metrics: self-efficacy, grit,
and growth mindset.
We will also measure a range of intermediate outcomes to understand the mechanisms
through which parental engagement affects student results. These include student time-use,
parental financial investment in education.

Our study's key constructed outcome is the
Index of Parental Engagement.
This index will be constructed from a set of yes/no questions administered through our
parent survey. Following the work of Epstein (1987) and Comer (1995), our measurement
focuses on two distinct types of parental engagement: home-based strategies and
school-based strategies. The specific questions will capture involvement in activities such
as:
1) Reading with children.
2) Engagement with homework.
3) Attending Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meetings.
4) Visiting schools or classrooms.
This series of questions will be combined to create a single index of parental
engagement that ranges from 0 to 1.
Student cognitive skills are based on literacy and numeracy scores based on a total of 11 items that test foundational literacy and numeracy as in ASER. Our outcomes are based on a standardised measure of the percentage correct responses for numeracy and literacy.
Additionally, our study will measure student non-cognitive skills, including self-efficacy,
grit, and growth mindset. While these are also constructed outcomes, their measurement
will draw on pre-validated scales from prior studies in education and psychology,
ensuring contextual relevance and validity.

The key secondary outcomes and analysis are as follows:

1) Student time-use
2) Parental financial investment in education
3) School practices linked to parental engagement

1) Student time-use: This will be measured by the percentage of time at home that
students spend on learning-based activities in a typical day, captured through a survey
administered to parents.
2) Parental financial investment in education: This outcome is measured as the amount
of Pakistani Rupees (PKR) a parent spends on their child's education in a typical month,
including school supplies and child nutrition.
3) School practices linked to parental engagement: We will measure the frequency of actions
undertaken by head teachers to promote parental engagement

The study employs a two stage sampling strategy designed to generate a representative sample of schools, students, and caregivers in Khairpur district. At the first stage, 600 government schools were randomly selected from the district’s pool of 3,103 public schools, with randomisation stratified by taluka to ensure fair geographic representation across all eight (08) sub-district administrative units. Only functioning government schools with teachers and at least 04 students enrolled into grade 4 were eligible for selection.
At the second stage, four Grade 4 students were randomly selected per school—two boys and two girls—to ensure gender balance in the student cohort. For every selected student, the primary caregiver (typically a parent or guardian responsible for day to day educational decisions) was recruited as the corresponding adult participant. This process yielded a final intended sample of 2,400 students and 2,400 parents or caregivers, alongside head teachers from all 600 selected schools.

Stratifying by tehsil and a dummy variable that captured high parental engagement, schools were randomised into treatment or control group.

Not available

Randomisation was carried out through STATA.

School

No

600

2400 parents and 2400 students

300/arm