Strengthening School Management in a School Reopening Context. Evidence from Peru

This project includes two main components. In the first one, we study the intervention Leadership for Renewal (LFR). It consists of a training program developed by the NGO Global School Leaders (GSL) that aims to enable school principals to lead effectively through this crisis, beginning with preparing for school re-opening. The LFR baseline program aims to directly affect school organization and structural communication with parents.

The research team worked with GSL to ensure the program is adapted to the local context and more focused on modules that will improve school organization in coordination with guidance from health authorities and improve communication with parents in a consistent and structured manner. In this sense, the adjusted program includes a total of six mentor-led sessions and three learning circles. The mentor-led sessions are the following: (i) leadership for wellbeing, (ii) community support, (iii) preparing the school for reopening, (iv) preparing staff for reopening, (v) ITC tools for management, (vi) tools for communication.

The intervention will follow a cascade approach. As the first step, in coordination with GSL and The Varkey Foundation, a number of local staff (UGEL specialists) will be trained to become program coaches. Then, these trained coaches will deliver the training to the group of principals working in schools that will be assigned to the treatment group. The content will be delivered through intensive virtual workshops aimed at building school principals’ skills for improving teaching and learning. All sessions will be covered in approximately 2 weeks. Then, during the learning circles, principals will be able to discuss their reopening plans, particularly those related to school organization and communication with families. Each learning circle has a duration of 1 hour.

In the second component, we collect data to understand what additional elements, in addition to training, might be also important for the reopening decision. Eliciting the principal's preferences for safe reopening is challenging due to data limitations and identification issues. To our knowledge, there is no data on what elements are essential to principals for the (voluntary or mandatory) reopening decision. Moreover, we can only see the realization of the decision and the conditions each principal faced ex-post, which makes it challenging to provide any causal claims. To overcome this, we design a discrete choice experiment (DCE) using vignettes for the reopening decision. Obtaining causal evidence on principals' preferences on elements for the decision of school reopening and how they value these elements, in terms of additional budget for the reopening, will help better inform how the MoE in Peru can efficiently mobilize financial resources for a safe and effective school reopening process.

2021-05-28

2021-09-10

At the school level: Probability of reopening.
At the course level: school attendance.
At the principal level: mental health, communication and management skills, socio-emotional skills
At the teacher level: attendance, mental health.

At the principal level: expectations/beliefs, perceptions of and preferences for risk, and determinants for the reopening decision.
At the teacher level: expectations/beliefs, perceptions of risk, and perceptions about principals' communication and management skills.

For the first component, we use a sample of 2,005 schools, we have randomly assigned them to the following groups:
- Treatment group (T): 1,123 schools will be randomly allocated to receive the training from the UGEL specialists. They will also participate in an intensive data collection activity.
- Control (C): 580 schools will be randomly assigned to a control group. They will not receive the training from the UGEL specialists but will participate in the intensive data collection activity.
- Pure control (PC): To address concerns about the Hawthorne effects--that is, principals and teachers can change their behavior in terms of how they report the data due to the intensity of the data collection process--we will randomly assign 302 schools to a pure control group that will neither receive the training nor will report any data. From these schools, we will collect administrative data on their reopening status.

For the second component, we plan to work with a sample of 1775 school principals distributed across eights regions in Peru from which we have phone numbers. To identify relevant elements for the reopening decision, we conducted five focus groups with 16 principals in January 2022. We found a total of 7 characteristics that are relevant for them: (1) the need for an additional budget for hygiene and cleaning kits, (2) the number of COVID cases in the district, (3) networks (if other principals have reopened), (4) adequacy of school for social distancing and hygiene, (5) liability for reopening, (6) training, and (7) UGEL support.

Using these characteristics, we created vignettes. Each vignette is a hypothetical setting for the reopening with a specific value for each of the seven features. Two vignettes constitute a choice set. We decided to vary only three of the characteristics between the two vignettes. The other four are held constant. Thus, we have a total of 10 groups of varying attributes. Then, following Datta (2019), we created a total of 180 choice sets (with two vignettes each), that is, 12 sets (24 vignettes) by a group of varying attributes. Each school principal will be presented with a total of 10 choices, each of them will be randomly selected from every group of varying attributes. To reduce cognitive burden, the varying attributes will be highlighted.

For the first component, we use a sample of 2,005 schools, we have randomly assigned them to the following groups:
- Treatment group (T): 1,123 schools will be randomly allocated to receive the training from the UGEL specialists. They will also participate in an intensive data collection activity.
- Control (C): 580 schools will be randomly assigned to a control group. They will not receive the training from the UGEL specialists but will participate in the intensive data collection activity.
- Pure control (PC): To address concerns about the Hawthorne effects--that is, principals and teachers can change their behavior in terms of how they report the data due to the intensity of the data collection process--we will randomly assign 302 schools to a pure control group that will neither receive the training nor will report any data. From these schools, we will collect administrative data on their reopening status.

For the second component, we plan to work with a sample of 1775 school principals distributed across eights regions in Peru from which we have phone numbers. To identify relevant elements for the reopening decision, we conducted five focus groups with 16 principals in January 2022. We found a total of 7 characteristics that are relevant for them: (1) the need for an additional budget for hygiene and cleaning kits, (2) the number of COVID cases in the district, (3) networks (if other principals have reopened), (4) adequacy of school for social distancing and hygiene, (5) liability for reopening, (6) training, and (7) UGEL support.

Using these characteristics, we created vignettes. Each vignette is a hypothetical setting for the reopening with a specific value for each of the seven features. Two vignettes constitute a choice set. We decided to vary only three of the characteristics between the two vignettes. The other four are held constant. Thus, we have a total of 10 groups of varying attributes. Then, following Datta (2019), we created a total of 180 choice sets (with two vignettes each), that is, 12 sets (24 vignettes) by a group of varying attributes. Each school principal will be presented with a total of 10 choices, each of them will be randomly selected from every group of varying attributes. To reduce cognitive burden, the varying attributes will be highlighted.

Randomization of the treatment assignment and allocation of vignettes will be done in-office by a computer using a self-coded script developed by the researchers.

The randomization unit will be schools for the first component and principals for the second component.

Yes

2,005 schools in the first component, 1,775 principals in the second component

Principals: 2,005 for the first component, and 1775 for the second component. Teachers: 4,010

1,123 schools training
580 schools control group
302 schools pure control group

All 1775 principals will be "treated" with an allocation of 10 vignettes in the DCE.

With this sample size, we expect to identify an MDE of 0.078SD for the training program and 0.09SD for the Hawthorne effect.