GCRF_NF46 Children's learning and development in the time of Covid19: Evidence from an ongoing longitudinal study in Ghana

2019冠状病毒病大流行及相关的社会和经济危机正在通过学校关闭、远程学习活动机会不平等以及家庭粮食不安全和贫困加剧，破坏中低收入国家儿童的教育。包括女童和最贫穷家庭儿童在内的风险更大的群体可能受到不成比例的影响，加剧了儿童教育、保健和更广泛发展方面现有的不平等。我们嵌入一个正在进行的纵向项目，加纳优质学前教育，流行病对儿童教育和更广泛的发展的影响的研究，为加纳城市10-12岁的男孩和女孩（N=~2,000），他们的家庭和教师（N=~400）的代表性样本。我们有四个主要目标。首先，我们调查了家庭和儿童对危机的脆弱性和复原力，从夏末开始对父母进行了三次电话调查，对儿童进行了一次电话调查，随后在2020-2021学年晚些时候进行了已经资助的儿童和父母直接评估。第二，通过对教师的三次额外电话调查，我们生成了关于儿童，家长和教师如何在学校关闭期间实施远程学习的新数据，以及如果在2020-21学年发生这种情况，则重新进入面对面教育。第三，借助计划于2020年秋季晚些时候和2021年春季开展的已获资助的数据收集活动，并结合之前四轮关于这些儿童从学前班开始的数据，我们研究了危机对学习和更广泛的儿童发展领域（健康，心理社会结果）影响的不平等。第四，我们监测贫困和粮食安全的变化，并研究其与晚年儿童教育成果的关系。这项拟议中的研究为加纳政府提供了独特的实时数据，为远程学习、重返学校、儿童、家庭和教师如何应对危机以及社会保护工作提供信息。研究结果将为加纳和更广泛的全球教育工作提供及时和急需的学术和政策见解，以保护儿童免受这一流行病对其学习和发展的长期影响。

The COVID-19 pandemic and related social and economic crises are undermining children's education in low- and middle-income countries through school closures, unequal access to remote-learning activities, and increased household food insecurity and poverty. Groups at greater risk, including girls and children from the poorest families, are likely being disproportionately affected, amplifying existing inequalities in child education, health and broader development. We embed in an ongoing longitudinal project, Quality Preschool for Ghana, a study of the pandemic's repercussions on children's education and broader development for a representative sample of urban Ghanaian boys and girls aged 10-12 years (N=~2,000), their households, and teachers (N=~400). We have four main goals. First, we investigate household and child vulnerability and resilience to the crisis, with three phone surveys with parents and one phone survey with children starting in late summer, followed by already-funded child and parent direct assessments later in the 2020-2021 school-year. Second, with three additional phone surveys with teachers, we generate new data on how children, parents and teachers are faring with the remote-learning implemented during school closures and with re-entry into in-person schooling should that happen in the 2020-21 school year. Third, by piggy-backing on already-funded data collection activities planned for later in the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, and combined with four prior rounds of data on these children starting in preschool, we examine inequalities in the effects of the crisis on learning and broader child development domains (health, psycho-social outcomes). Fourth, we monitor changes in poverty and food security and examine their associations with later-in-life children's educational outcomes. The proposed study provides the Ghanaian government with unique, real-time data to inform remote-learning, school-reentry, how children, families and teachers are coping with the crisis, and social-protection efforts. Results will provide timely and much-needed academic and policy insights for Ghana and broader global educational efforts to protect children from the long-term effects of the pandemic on their learning and development.