Early School Failure,Early School Failure, a bottleneck for reaching the goal a bottleneck for reaching the goal
of Universal Primary Educationof Universal Primary Education++
A proposal for overcoming failure:A proposal for overcoming failure:
The Programme The Programme
““Todos Pueden Aprender / Todos Pueden Aprender / Promoción Asistida”Promoción Asistida”
1
All children in schooll at 2015Global iniciative on Out-of-School Children
UNICEF and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics Methodology Workshop Istanbul 21-25 june 2010
WHAT ?
The challenge of failure in the lower grades
In LAC there is no quantitative restriction to universal primary education, and parents are very interested in sending children to school:
- Access to primary education is almost universal
- Access to initial education is sharply on the rise- Demand on secondary education is increasing
steadily
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
16 of 100 age 8+ children are not in school
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 170,0%
20,0%
40,0%
60,0%
80,0%
100,0%
120,0%
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
For example, the school failure in the Central America is high:
55 of 100 children don´t complete 5 years’ primary in expected time
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 170,0%
20,0%
40,0%
60,0%
80,0%
100,0%
120,0%
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
For example, the school failure in the Central America is high:
Most girls/boys age 8+ that are not in school, have previously attended school, but they dropped out
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 170,0%
20,0%
40,0%
60,0%
80,0%
100,0%
120,0%
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
For example, the school failure in the Central America is high:
Bottleneck for achieving Universal Primary Education: EARLY SCHOOL FAILURE
Shows up as grade repetition/retention, irregular attendance, temporary extended breaks in attendance
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Population by age
Enrolment inAppropriate age
EnrolmentBy grade
Steady enrolment, overage increases
Latent risk Drop out
Argentina, 2007
Total Enrolment by grade and population by age
0
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
700000
800000
900000
Grade / Age
Stu
de
nts
by
gra
de
an
d a
ge
17years - Grade 12
16years - Grade 11
15years - Grade 10
14years - Grade 9
13years - Grade 8
12years - Grade 7
11years - Grade 6
10years - Grade 5
9 years - Grade 4
8 years - Grade 3
7 years - Grade 2
6 years - Grade 1
5 years
692.381
625.403581.061
558.525543.769520.746
483.958
420.093
353.856318.403
263.473222.560
683.495 683.301 673.787 678.644
769.523 759.497
608.701570.184
433.014
336.807
792.167818.182
Analysis of early school failure and its after-effects: The Argentine context
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
17years - Grade 12
16years - Grade 11
15years - Grade 10
14years - Grade 9
13years - Grade 8
12years - Grade 7
11years - Grade 6
10 years - Grade 5
9 years - Grade 4
8 years - Grade 3
7 years - Grade 2
6 years - Grade 1
5 years
29.120
19.301
15.958
13.326
8.8796.898
31.409
37.512
24.054 24.977
23.047 22.406
24.453
17.169
14.948 14.09612.797
11.1429.468
8.2917.128
6.0294.476
3.560
Early school failure and after-effects: the province of Misiones in 2001
Misiones, 2001
Total Enrolment by grade and population by age
Grade / Age
Population by age
Enrolment inAppropriate age
EnrolmentBy grade
Stu
de
nts
by
gra
de
an
d a
ge
Peak enrolment, overage increases Latent risk Drop out
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The previous data and further research show that:
• Over-age condition predicts drop-out
• Attendance to preschool doesn’t prevent failure in the
first years of primary
• At the end of Grade 3, 2.5 in 10 children have
experimented a failure
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The previous data and further research show that:
• Many of the students in this risk group will drop out of school,
at least 1 in 10
• Others will persist, but their achievement will be endangered
• Many students in this group won’t survive the transition to
secondary school (3 in 10 ending primary and entering
secondary)
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
WHY ?
The causes and effects of low achievement in the first years
It is not about availability of resources…
In the former example of Misiones, this situation happens even when there has been state investment:
in resources for schools (buildings, books…)
in social protection measures: School lunch, Scholarships, Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT)
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The trigger of failure: Low quality instruction
in contexts with low cultural capital of familiesSchools assume implicitly that insufficient, ineffective instruction has to be compensated by the family at home
Families cannot give children the support that schools are obliged to provide them
Children pay the price…
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
A self-fulfiling prophecy: the failure confirms the
undisputed beliefs of families, schools and society
that those children “were not ready to learn”
Consequences:Grade repetition, starting point of a personal feeling of low self-esteem (personal dimension of failure)
Schools don’t feel the need to change because failure was “inevitable”; low learning of schools as organizations (institutional dimension of failure)
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Research findings about “low achievement” in Grade 1 show that:
1)Many students from poor sectors experiment some difficulties with reading and writing short sentences at the end of Grade 1.
2)Many students are advancing in the process of mastering reading and writing skills, but the assessment instruments expect outcomes that are excessive, and not necessary
3)Teachers think that students that don’t know well enough how to read and write can´t be promoted to the next grade
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
• A study of the associated factors of cognitive achievement of students in the context of SERCE (OREALC UNESCO) shows that having repeated grades clearly worsens the learning outcomes of students, even after subtracting the effect of other variables
• Models for Latin America and the Caribbean showh that students who repeated grades get lower scores –equivalent to 25 points- in all tests of Spanish and Mathematics
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
HOW ?
The Program “Todos Pueden Aprender”(Everybody can learn)
An effective strategy for avoiding failure in the first years of primary school
The program “Todos Pueden Aprender” (TPA) The program “Todos Pueden Aprender” (TPA)
Is a web of intervention strategies devised to protect the children from the negative effects of discontinuities in the school itinerary
Aims: to broaden the learning opportunities for all children– increasing the number of students that show mastery of
mandated curriculum content in literacy and numeracy in the first cycle of primary school,
– reducing the number of students experimenting grade retention and the consequent problems associated with over-age
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The program “Todos Pueden Aprender” (TPA) The program “Todos Pueden Aprender” (TPA)
Is a web of intervention strategies devised to protect the children from the negative effects of discontinuities in the school itinerary
Design principles:– respect and appreciation of children’ and youngsters’
potentials– adequacy and pertinence for teachers and principals– sustainability and possibility to go to scale
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The program is based in a reduced but sufficient set of interventions to achieve improved results:
1. Teachers
Implement effective, state-of-the-art instructional methodologies for teaching literacy and numeracy, based in well-structured, sequenced, step-by-step activities
Review their theoretical frameworks and analyse impacts of changes in instruction methods on students’ outcomes
Receive on-the-job coaching and mentorship
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
2. School Principals
Optimize their decisions about time, space and staff management to reinforce the identity of the first school cycle as a multi-year process
Design and provide in-school interventions for helping students with lower levels of achievement
Strengthen their leading capabilities by building stable agreements with teachers for improved instruction
The program is based in a reduced but sufficient set of interventions to achieve improved results:
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
3. A group of persons including, but not limited to, the school management team, take protective actions in the case of students that require particular help measures and medium-term support to avoid failure
4. All participants benefit from an information system that registers gradual improvements in the learning outcomes of students, through tests applied in a systematical way twice a year. The results are uploaded into an automatically operated website from where schools can download the processed data reports
The program is based in a reduced but sufficient set of interventions to achieve improved results:
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The program is based in a reduced but sufficient set of interventions to achieve improved results:
5. The program is developed in a time-cycle of 4 years to build local leading teams and allow sustainable, systemic change in school practices:
Teacher Training Institutions involved in the program have developed their capacity for continuing support to teachers
Supervision and/or Inspectorate teams have built tools for developing the competencies of school leading teams
Principals and headteachers have increased their capacity for leading the pedagogical process in their schools
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Results
0,0 %
2,0 %
4,0 %
6,0 %
8,0 %
10,0 %
12,0 %
14,0 %
16,0 %
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
4,7 %
11,9 %
6,9 %
9,3 %
13,6 %
7,8 %
Formosa CityFormosa TotalCountry Total
year 2004
% of students repeating grades in the first 3 years of primary (2004 and 2008)
year 2008
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
age
5ag
e 6
age
7ag
e 8
age
9
age
10
age
11
age
12
age
13
age
14
age
15
age
16
age
17
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Total enrolment and Enrolment in due age. Year 2009Province of Formosa
12.125 12.52213.650
12.714 13.029
10.860
8.114
10.2279.440
7.3116.594
4.886
3.357Total Enrolment
Enrolment in due age
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Students by grade and age (2004 and 2009) Province of Formosa
13.428
10.711 9.840
3.502
3.2803.106
Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3
year 2004 year 2009
Due age Over age 1
Over age 2 Over age 3+
Total Enrolment
9.324
12.19110.118
2.662
2.295
2.494
1.358
781
1.2111.412
585
1.079
15.85214.75614.902
1.262
1.4921.542
814
1.2731.498
19.006
16.75615.986
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
5.2514.664 4.488 4.861 4.514 4.392
1.018
1.1661.066 401
545 753
332437
482
180304
362
91 173 274141218
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Students by grade and age (2004 and 2009) Formosa City
Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3
year 2004 year 2009
Due age Over age 1
Over age 2 Over age 3+
Total Enrolment6.781 6.571 6.398
5.405 5.3735.637
0,0%
5,0%
10,0%
15,0%
20,0%
25,0%
30,0%
35,0%
40,0%
45,0%
grade 1 grade 2 grade 3 grade 4
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
% students over due age, by grade (2004 and 2009) Province of Formosa
29,3%
36,1%38,4%
41,3%
23,1%
32,1%
36,8%39,2%year 2004
year 2009
0,0%
10,0%
20,0%
30,0%
40,0%
50,0%
60,0%
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Improvement in literacy outcomes during the programProvince of Formosa (2006 and 2008)
4,1%
21,2%
51,3%
23,5%
1,0%
31,4%
45,6%
13,4%
5,6%3,1%
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6
Placement in the Literacy advancement scale
grade 1 - year 2006
grade 3 - year 2008
Students with low initial scores
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Improvement in literacy outcomes during the programProvince of Formosa (2006 and 2008)
0,0%
10,0%
20,0%
30,0%
4,1%
21,2%
Level 1 Level 2
Learning outcomes in literacy at the end of the program of students with low initial scores. Province of Formosa (2008)
Learning outcomes in literacy at the end of the program of students with low initial scores. Province of Formosa (2008)
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6
Placement in the Literacy advancement scale
0,0%
2,0%
4,0%
6,0%
8,0%
10,0%
12,0%
14,0%
16,0%
18,0%
20,0%
0,0%
2,0%
4,0%
6,0%
8,0%
10,0%
12,0%
14,0%
16,0%
18,0%
20,0%
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Learning outcomes in literacy at the end of the program of students with low initial scores. Province of Formosa (2008)
0,8%1,6%
2,6%
4,9%
9,1%
6,3%
Main Achievement…
Students at risk are protected and enjoy from better learning opportunities to build a solid foundation for literacy and numeracy
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Other Achievements
Schools develop a readiness to include children out of school, and reduce the risk of dropping out
Teachers improve their ability to revise their practices, knowledge and beliefs
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
A sustainable reduction in grade
retention
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
1º Grade Provinces implementing the program:
Rest of the provinces: 1º Grade
3º GradeProvinces implementing the program:
14,6% 14,9%
12,0%
11,5%12,1% 12,5%
8,8%7,7%
Provinces implementing the program: Chaco, Jujuy, Misiones and Tucumán
Source: MECyT, RAMC 2002 - 2006
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
0
5
10
15
20
25
2000 2002 2004 2006
Total country 3rd. Grade
Misiones 1st. Grade
Misiones 3rd. Grade
Total country 1st. Grade
Source: MECyT, RAMC 2002 - 2006
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Lowering retention: the case of Misiones
Research on brain development and learningResearch on brain development and learning shows that all children, independently of gender, ethnic background or social origin have a full set of natural capabilities for learning, even when it’s true that some children can enter school with differences in cultural capital or cognitive stimulation
However, adult misconceptionsadult misconceptions and inadequate inadequate instruction methodsinstruction methods are in the roots of failure: low achievement is misconceived as a lack of children´s capabilities, adult teaching skills “have nothing to do” with failure
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The problem from the point of view of “learning disabilities” more than “low instructional competencies”
Key (wrong) assumptions:Key (wrong) assumptions:
“Becoming literate is natural and easy for humans”
“Low achievers have learning disabilities or they need to mature”
“Children coming from illiterate backgrounds can’t learn”
• literacy is a complex, high level cognitive ability, requiring well-structured, strategic teaching interventions)
• children have a ready, willing and capable brain, wanting to be stimulated and open to development, to learn complex content they need method, time and redundancy in interventions)
• underestimation of the power and function of school, overestimation of social determinism)
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
The problem from the point of view of “teacher discouragement” more than “low instructional competencies”
Key (wrong) assumptions: Key (wrong) assumptions:
“Teachers are not capable, are not motivated, don’t want to teach well”
Underestimation of existing lacks of training and capacity building to enable teachers to:
Implement effective instructional strategies, especially for early reading instructionUnderstand brain processes (cognitive and affective)
that are in the base of learning and using this info for planning teachingDetect behaviors that show incipient learning levels
(usually interpreted as errors) Implement diversified teaching strategies for students
in different starting points, within an inclusive methodological approach
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Key action:
Improvement of the pedagogical practices of schools catering for population at risk or that could receive children currently out of school.
Leverage points - Breaking the inertia by promoting a virtuous circle:
Implementing high quality teaching methodology during brief periods,
observing and registering improvements in learning,
Analyzing theoretical background and questioning assumptions,
expanding confidence in teacher’s own competencies for teaching and students competencies for learning
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Principles
Quality instruction is considered the main factor in triggering quality learning
Learning is conceived as a continuum, where each students advances at her/his own pace
Assessment is devised to show intermediate advances of students along the learning process, and to detect children who need additional help
Additional opportunities given by their teachers to students with slower learning rhythms help them to keep pace with their age group
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades
Principles
Grade promotion in the first years is assessed in the framework of the multi-year process required for developing literacy
Unconscious assumptions that portray grade retention as a positive mechanism need to be revised and challenged by the results of introducing new practices in teaching and assessment
School change is sustained by medium term agreements among principals and teachers
Programa Todos Pueden Aprender – Promoción Asistida: An effective strategy for avoiding school failure in the first grades