Impact of Catch-up Clubs in Conflict-Affected Myanmar: A Community-Led Remedial Learning Model
Myanmar is dealing with a protracted learning crisis in areas of the country where the COVID-19 pandemic was compounded by a coup in February 2021, which extended school closings. Save the Children created the Catch-up Clubs (CuCs), an intervention that supports children’s remedial learning and addresses barriers to their successful return to school in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CuCs are an innovative model that offers community-led, play-based literacy instruction to children who are grouped by ability rather than age. The CuCs assess children’s foundational literacy and social and emotional learning (SEL), while also addressing issues of child protection and economic barriers to education. The model was piloted with more than 3,000 children in the upper primary to lower secondary grades who are living in 36 communities in the conflict-affected states of Rakhine and Kayin. We conducted a quasi-natural experimental impact evaluation to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between the CuCs and children’s literacy outcomes and SEL competencies. The study was contextually adapted to consider children affected by conflict, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. The results show that children who participated in the CuCs had significantly higher levels of literacy and SEL competency than children who did not participate. The participating children also demonstrated greater self-confidence, and they aspired to remain in school or to continue their schooling at a higher level.