Recent research on the effects of COVID-19 on school closures has mainly focused on primary and secondary education, with extremely limited attention to early childhood education (ECE). To address this gap, we identify the extent to which parents and caregivers with pre-primary school-aged children were engaged in their children’s learning during school closures in Ethiopia. Our focus on Ethiopia is of particular relevance given that ECE provision has expanded dramatically in recent years, aimed at ensuring children are prepared for primary school. Using data collected through a phone survey with 480 parents and caregivers, the results revealed that learning disruption due to COVID-19 school closures is likely to be substantial and will probably widen existing inequalities further. Many poorer households and those where parents or caregivers are not literate, are less likely to have child-oriented learning resources, and home learning activities between parents and children in these households are limited. The study highlights that greater attention needs to be paid to mitigate the threats of COVID-19 on Ethiopia’s recent gains in ECE, to prevent the pandemic from further reinforcing inequalities between children from advantaged and disadvantaged households.

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The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the education sector in unprecedented ways. As with many other countries around the world, the Ethiopian government closed schools following the first identified case in the capital city, Addis Ababa, on the 16th of March 2020. Across the country, these closures resulted in more than 26 million learners staying at home for almost eight months (UNESCO, 2021). In addition to this hiatus in their education, pupils were promoted automatically to the next grade with only 45 days of catch-up classes (Ministry of Education, 2020). In other words, those attending a specific school grade in March 2020 were then promoted to the next grade when school resumed in October 2020. For a significant proportion of Ethiopian pupils, learning during school closures was extremely limited despite the government’s efforts to create educational programmes via national television and radio stations (Kim et al., 2021a; Yorke et al., 2020). School closures, combined with barriers to accessing remote educational resources, meant potential learning losses for a significant number of pupils. Several studies have already indicated that COVID-19 resulted in learning losses, especially among the poorest and most disadvantaged groups. A study in Indonesia found that pupils lost 11 points on the PISA3 reading scale due to the four-month school closure from March to July 2020 (Yarrow, Masood & Afkar, 2020). It was also estimated that Grade 4 pupils in South Africa experienced losses equivalent to more than 60 percent of an academic year (Ardington, Wills & Kotze, 2021), while pupils in the UK lost a third of their expected learning during pandemic-related school closures (Major, Eyles & Machin, 2021). It is anticipated that school closures in Ethiopia could similarly result in learning losses and challenges for pupils to catch up with their learning, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our related emerging findings in Ethiopia have indicated that school closures exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in education, where progress was much lower for rural students compared to those in urban areas who were tracked from Grade 4 to Grade 6 (Kim et al., 2021b; Bayley et al., 2021). Building on this work in Ethiopia, this Insight Note provides a new perspective on numeracy achievements of Grade 1 and Grade 4 pupils by comparing learning at the start of each academic year and the gains over the course of the year across two academic years: 2018-19 and 2020-21. During the 2018-19 academic year, the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Ethiopia programme collected data on students’ numeracy achievement from 168 schools. After schools reopened in October 2020, and with additional support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, data on students’ numeracy achievements were collected for two new cohorts of pupils in Grades 1 and 4 in the same schools using the same instruments. This has enabled us to compare learning patterns between two cohorts in the same grades and schools before and during the pandemic. More specifically, in this Insight Note, we aim to: -Compare foundational numeracy levels of pupils entering Grade 1 in the 2020-21 academic year relative to those in 2018-19. -Compare progress in foundational numeracy for Grade 1 pupils over the course of the 2020-21 academic year relative to that seen during the 2018-19 academic year. -Compare numeracy levels of pupils entering Grade 4 in the 2020-21 academic year relative to those entering the same grade in 2018-19. -Compare progress in numeracy for Grade 4 pupils over the course of the 2020-21 academic year relative to the progress seen during the 2018-19 academic year. -Estimate the magnitude of learning loss attributable to the pandemic by calculating the difference in numeracy levels and progress between the two cohorts.

This paper assesses the factors underpinning trends in mathematics learning for Grade 4 pupils in Ethiopia based on data collected in 2012-13 (the Young Lives surveys, YL) and 2018-19 (the RISE surveys). It combines comparable data on attainments on tests of students’ mathematics knowledge with information on their family background, their teachers, and the schools they attend. The period covered by the study encompasses an education reform, the General Education Quality Improvement Program – Phase II (GEQIP-II). GEQIP-II’s goals included increasing access to primary education and the quality of education that was provided. We find that mathematics teachers’ educational qualifications and teacher content knowledge in mathematics improved between 2012 and 2018. Despite this, students in 2018 have learning levels lower than students in 2012. This reflects, in part, changes in the composition of the samples, with the 2018 sample coming from poorer and rural households. However, students in 2018 show greater learning progress over the course of a school year compared to students in 2012. Using a value-added model, we show that learning outcomes in mathematics at the end of the school year are associated with teacher content knowledge, that this association has increased in magnitude over time, and that this content knowledge is especially important for weaker students. The key to reconciling these paradoxical findings is, thus, to recognize that the reforms that underpin these improvements in school quality may well be working in multiple ways, changing the composition of the student body who attend school as well as increasing the amount of learning that takes place in the classroom, particularly for weaker students. This, juxtaposed with the fact that the education reforms implemented over the last decade have sought to both include students from disadvantaged backgrounds and to improve teacher quality, is suggestive of the possibility that the GEQIP initiatives were producing positive learning results.

This paper focuses on research from the RISE Ethiopia team and addresses two major objectives: analysing the progress made towards achieving key goals under the four focus areas of GEQIP-E (internal efficiency, quality, equity, and system strengthening for policy formulation and reform) and whether the indicators of GEQIP-E implementation have been associated with estimated improvements in numeracy over one academic year. The analysis is based on longitudinal data collected as part of the RISE Ethiopia programme during the academic years 2018/19 and 2021/22, as they coincide with the implementation of GEQIP-E (GEQIP-E was disrupted by the dual shocks of COVID-19 and the violent civil conflicts that erupted in November 2020). Findings are presented under the four areas of intervention (school internal efficiency, quality, equity and system strengthening) and the final section links these areas of intervention with learning outcomes.