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Text messages and a weekly 20-minute phone call from a teacher can improve children’s learning during prolonged school closures, finds a large trial conducted in five countries1. The approach offers a relatively cheap way to support children when schooling is disrupted by pandemics, natural disasters or other emergencies, say the study authors.
Previous studies have considered the best way to educate children during emergencies, says co-author Noam Angrist, an education researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, but much of that research applies to certain locations and situations. There is “almost no rigorous evidence” about what interventions can help children to learn when schools are disrupted, he adds.
Angrist says that he and his colleagues wanted to develop an intervention that could tested through trials and implemented across different countries and settings. The results are published in Nature today.
Naomi Barnes, an education researcher at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, says that mobile phones are a good technology to use in times of crisis because they are widely available. And one-to-one targeted instruction, in which teachers adapt to the child’s level of knowledge, is effective. The study has “taken these aspects of disaster management and these aspects of schooling that we know work, and brought them together in a way that I don't think many have thought about before”, adds Barnes.
Nudges to study
Following a pilot in Botswana in 2020, the researchers conducted five randomized trials in India, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines and Uganda during COVID-19 school closures between 2020 and 2022. More than 16,000 households took part, with one primary-school child enrolled from each household. Most children were in grades 3 to 5, except in Kenya, where the participants were in grades 1 and 2. The researchers worked with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in each country to recruit families.
Children were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Pupils in the control group received no extra educational support, whereas a second group received weekly text messages containing learning prompts with content related to mathematics, as well as nudges to study. A third group received the same text messages along with weekly tutoring calls for either 8 or 12 weeks. Tutors focused mainly on teaching arithmatic.
Rather than following a fixed curriculum, tutors first assessed what each child could do and then taught material at the child’s level. The lessons were adjusted as children progressed, Angrist says.
Across the five countries, children who received tutoring plus text messages improved the most compared with those who received no extra support. The children who received only text messages had modest improvements in their learning compared with the control group.
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