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Annex 9 - Changes in Girls’ Learning Levels
In both countries, we observe a positive correlation between changes in learning levels and task difficulty, with greater falls in the more difficult tasks. In Kenya, we find learning losses in all but three questions of the SeGRA 1 test and all but two questions in maths. In four of those five questions, we observe a correlation between learning levels and task difficulty with one task of the SeGRA test being an exemption. Similarly, we observe greater learning falls in the more difficult tasks in Nepal. In both reading and maths, we estimate declines in learning across all tasks except for one maths and reading task. The panel sample of girls shows similar results to the cross-cohort sample of girls, validating the results.
For example, in Kenya, while there is an estimated learning gain on SeGMA Task1q1a, pupils registered a learning loss on Task1q1b. Both these tasks consist of multiplication exercises, but the level of difficulty marginally increases in the latter task. Analogy is observed for SeGRA where students registered a learning gain on Task1q1, but a learning loss on Task1q2. This is likely because the answer to the former could have been seen by pupils, while the latter requires a name for an object under a water surface. This is illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2 below, which detail the percentage changes per task achieved and examples of exercises for Maths and reading, respectively.
Similarly, task difficulty is found to be positively correlated with learning losses identified in Nepal, which are of a greater magnitude compared to Kenya. See Figure 3 and Figure 4 for an illustration of this association for Maths and reading in Nepal, respectively.
1 The reading (SeGRA) test consisted of drawing inferences from two passages and an essay question where children write a short story based on a specific issue. The maths (SeGMA) assessment consisted of three parts, starting with simple numerical operations through simplifying algebraic expressions to more sophisticated maths problems.
