Supplementing measures of social accountability and enhancing understanding of accountability and students' achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic

这一扩充项目将通过增加公共支出措施，并对学校、学校管理委员会以及家长项目的一部分学生和家长进行后续调查，丰富由英国国际发展部-经济社会研究中心资助的家长项目数据。家长项目已经为尼泊尔学校教育做出了重大贡献，开发和测试了一套工具，以收集有关学校表现和学生教育结果的信息。对这些数据的分析表明，学生学习与家长的知识、参与和赋权等问责措施之间存在很强的关联。然而，由于尼泊尔的治理结构正在从中央治理系统向地方治理系统过渡，包括在教育部门，在母项目期间收集有关公共支出和提供服务的信息是不可行的。缺乏这些重要的问责措施限制了我们的发现。此外，自家长项目完成以来，与新冠肺炎相关的学校关闭已经极大地改变了学校、家长和学生的学习环境。这一变化具有破坏性，对一些学校和学生的负面影响比其他学校更大。为了加强我们的社会责任措施，并让我们了解新冠肺炎是如何与社会责任和学生学习相结合的，我们提出了以下四个目标：目标一。进行公共支出跟踪和服务提供情况调查，并深入访问地方政府机构的代表，以将支出数据添加到我们的社会问责措施中。对参与家长研究的学生、家长、校长和学校管理委员会/学校董事会(SMC/SB)进行电话跟踪调查，以了解与新冠肺炎相关的学校中断如何影响他们以及中断如何影响学生的学习。收集巴拉特普尔市(BMC)的学校教育考试(见)分数。本次全国高考在10年级末进行，将于2021年3月对我们抽样的学生进行测试。将新收集的数据与现有的学生、家长和学校层面的数据联系起来，以评估新冠肺炎期间学校中断和问责对学生教育结果的影响。特别是，我们将探索与疫情爆发前相比，新冠肺炎之后辍学率、出勤率和学生成绩(见分数)是如何变化的。我们将考虑学习环境和家庭和学校的支持结构等因素。我们亦会探讨不同的学校应对策略，以及这些策略是否与问责措施有关。我们会透过对学生分组的分析，研究学校扰乱对部分学生的负面影响为何较其他学生为大。例如，我们将比较男性和女性，优势和弱势群体，父母受教育程度高和受教育程度低的学生，有父母和没有父母的国际移民学生，以及在早期评估中表现良好的学生与表现不佳的学生。这项研究将产生重要的科学资源，包括：(1)低收入情况下跟踪公共支出的措施；(2)学校、校董会、家长和学生问责的后续措施；以及(3)在理解问责与学生在新冠肺炎期间成绩之间关系方面的科学进展。我们将通过当地传播研讨会向科学家和政策制定者广泛提供这些发现，以分享研究结果，通过ICPSR和英国数据服务中心公开提供数据，并通过在国家和国际会议和出版物上发表科学文章和政策简报来公开这些数据。

This augmentation project will enrich the parent project data funded by DFID-ESRC by adding measures of public expenditure and conducting a follow-up survey of schools, school management committees, and a sub set of students and parents from the parent project. The parent project has already made significant contribution to Nepali school education by developing and testing a set of tools to gather information about school performance and student educational outcomes.Analysis of these data revealed strong associations between student learning and accountability measures such as parents' knowledge, engagement, and empowerment. However, because of the ongoing transition in Nepal's governance structure from a centralized to a local governance system, including in the education sector, it was not feasible to collect information about public expenditure and service delivery during the parent project. The lack of these important accountability measures has limited our findings. Additionally, since the parent project was completed, COVID-19 related school closures have dramatically changed the learning environment for schools, parents, and students. This change has been disruptive, negatively affecting some schools and students more than others. To enhance our social accountability measures and inform our understanding of how COVID-19 intersects with social accountability and student learning we propose the following four aims:Aim One. Conduct a public expenditure tracking and service delivery survey and in-depth interview with representatives of local government bodies to add expenditure data to our measures of social accountability.Aim Two. Conduct follow-up phone surveys with students, parents, school principals, and School Management Committees/School Boards (SMC/SB) that participated in the parent study to understand how COVID-19 related school disruptions have affected them and how disruptions have impacted student learning.Aim Three. Collect School Education Examination (SEE) scores from Bharatpur Metropolitan City (BMC). This national exam taken at the end of grade 10 will be administered to students in our sample in March 2021.Aim Four. Link the newly collected data with existing student, parent, and school-level data to estimate the effect of school disruptions and accountability during COVID-19 on student education outcomes. In particular, we will explore how dropout rates, attendance rates, and student achievement (SEE scores) have changed after COVID-19 compared to before the pandemic. We will consider factors like learning environment and support structures at home and school. We will also explore different school coping strategies and whether these strategies are correlated with accountability measures.We will investigate how school disruptions have a greater negative impact on some students more than others by conducting our analyses among sub-groups of students. For example, we will compare males and females, advantagedand disadvantaged ethnic groups, students with highly educated and less educated parents, students with and without parents who are international migrants, and students who performed well in earlier assessments compared to those who did not perform well. This study will generate important scientific resources including: (1) measures of public expenditure tracking in a low income context; (2) follow-up measures of accountability from schools, school management committees, parents, andstudents; and (3) scientific advancement in our understanding of the relationship between accountability and students' achievement during COVID-19. We will make these findings widely available to scientists and policy makers through local dissemination workshops to share findings of the study, making the data publicly available through ICPSR and the UK Data Service, and through presentations at national and international conferences and publications in scientific articles and policy brief.