Brombacher & Associates have concluded their 3-year independent study of Edulution’s South Africa operations; measuring Edulution’s impact on Learner achievement. 6,036 Edulution Learners were studied and compared to a control group of 1,843 students not enrolled on an Edulution Programme.
After 2 years on the Edulution Numeracy Programme, the average Learner performs 33% better than their peers.
Robust and independent impact evaluation is the cornerstone of our monitoring and evaluation strategy. These results validate our methodology and theory of change while identifying where we can improve.
The 4 main findings of the report are that:
Starting early produces the largest gains. The percentage change in average assessment score is increased the earlier the Learners begin the Programme - their growth is far greater than those that received the intervention later in their school career.
Staggered sessions should be explored. Edulution may want to test whether spreading out contact sessions over time can lead to better retention of information, allowing for more opportunities to consolidate information into long-term memory.
Learners progress but mastery is elusive. Data shows clear shifts from one year to the next with the proportion of Edulution Learners in the lowest learning bands decreasing and the proportion in the second and third bands increasing. The control group shows little to no evidence of this shift, highlighting the Edulution Programme’s positive effect. The proportion of Learners in the highest bands, however, remains low, due to the original learning deficit being so high. This illustrates that Edulution is a necessary catch-up step, but more must be done to get Learners into these higher bands.
Knowing and applying are different. Unsurprisingly, Learners do better on items that focus on knowing than on the items that assess their ability to apply that knowledge. Clearly, foundational maths skills must be improved in order for application of knowledge to occur.
By analysing our dataset in this way we can uncover valuable insights regarding Learner behaviours, preferences, and patterns of engagement. This information will enable us to personalise and enhance the learning experience, tailoring it to the unique needs of each Learner and promoting self-paced learning and mastery at each level. Overall, we believe that the mining and usage of our dataset has the potential to significantly increase the effectiveness of our Programme by 50%, which will lower costs per Learner outcome and improve our scalability.
To read the full report, click here: