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This paper draws on data from the RISE Ethiopia, to explore the perspectives of system- and school-level stakeholders involved in supporting education for children with disabilities as part of the GEQIP-E programme.

This paper presents the findings of longitudinal research conducted in Ethiopia exploring the effects of COVID-19 school closures on children’s holistic learning, including their socio-emotional and academic learning. It draws on data from over 2,000 pupils captured in 2019 and 2021 to compare primary school children’s dropout and learning before and after school closures. The study adapts self-reporting scales used in similar contexts to measure grade 4–6 pupils’ social skills and numeracy. Findings highlight the risk of widening inequality regarding educational access and outcomes, related to pupils’ gender, age, wealth and location. They also highlight a decline in social skills following school closures and identify a positive and significant relationship between pupils’ social skills and numeracy over time. In conclusion, we recommend a need for education systems to promote children’s holistic learning, which is even more vital in the aftermath of the pandemic.

This paper presents the findings of research undertaken in Ethiopia to examine the effects of COVID-19 school closures on children’s holistic learning, including both socio-emotional and academic learning. It draws on data collected in 2019 (prior to the pandemic) and 2021 (after schools reopened) to compare primary pupils’ learning before and after the school closures. In particular, the study adapts self-reporting scales that have been used in related contexts to measure Grade 3 and 6 children’s social skills, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and mental health and wellbeing, along with literacy and numeracy. Lesson observations were also undertaken to explore teachers’ behaviours to foster socio-emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom. The findings advance current knowledge in several respects. First, they quantify the decline in Ethiopian pupils’ social skills over the period of the school closures. Second, they identify a significant and strong relationship between learners’ social skills and their numeracy, even after taking other factors into account. Third, they reveal a significant association between children’s social skills and their mental health and wellbeing, highlighting the importance of interpersonal interactions to safeguard children’s holistic welfare. The paper concludes by proposing a model for understanding the relationship between learners’ SEL and academic outcomes, and with recommendations for education planning and practice, in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

Over the past two and a half decades, significant progress has been made in relation to girls’ education in Ethiopia. However, challenges remain, particularly in terms of girls’ progression, completion, and learning, with girls in more rural and remote areas facing the greatest difficulties. Drawing on data from the RISE Ethiopia qualitative study, we explore the factors at the individual, family, school, and community levels that impact girls’ education and learning from the perspectives of girls themselves. Specifically, we include the views of 15 female students enrolled in Grades 4 and 5 of primary school and of their parents/caregivers from five different regional states in Ethiopia, and across both rural and urban locations. We situate our analysis within the context of the government’s large-scale quality education reform programme (GEQIP-E) that has a specific focus on girls’ education. Our findings highlight the importance of taking account of the heterogeneity of girls’ experiences, including the varied challenges that diverse groups of girls face, and the different challenges they may encounter at distinct stages of their educational journeys. Our findings also highlight the importance of including the perspectives of girls and their families, within the context in which they are located.

This paper explores methodological issues relating to research on children’s socio-emotional learning (SEL), mental health and wellbeing in low- and lower-middle-income countries. In particular, it examines the key considerations and challenges that researchers may face and provides practical guidance for generating reliable and valid data on SEL, mental health and wellbeing in diverse settings and different cultural contexts. In so doing, the paper draws on the experience of recent research undertaken in Ethiopia to illustrate some of the issues and how they were addressed. The present study extends earlier 2018-2019 RISE Ethiopia research, expanding its scope to consider further aspects of SEL, mental health and wellbeing in the particular context of COVID-19. In particular, the research highlights that the pandemic has brought to the fore the importance of assessing learning, and learning loss, beyond academic learning alone.

This paper provides a review of Evans and Yuan’s 2019 paper on ‘What We Learn about Girls’ Education from Interventions that Don’t Focus on Girls.’ Their thought-provoking paper raises an important point that even where interventions are not directly aimed at addressing gender issues, evaluations of these programmes should report gender-disaggregated findings (including where results are similar for both girls and boys). They go further than this to suggest ‘…specifically targeting girls may not be necessary to help those girls succeed. If policymakers want to help girls learn, they can make schools better for all children’ (p4). Our review suggests that this conclusion is not warranted based on the information provided in the paper. We raise five points from which we conclude that, if anything, a combination of girl-targeted and general interventions is needed. Importantly, a conclusion to be drawn is that the scope of girl-targeted interventions that have been evaluated to date is narrow, and do not sufficiently address gender-related structural barriers in education, notably ones that affect marginalised girls (for example according to poverty, where they live, whether they have a disability etc) in different ways.