Evaluation of Connecting Classrooms in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Lebanon. Wave 2

This report presents the overseas findings from the impact evaluation of the Connecting Classrooms programme, the British Council's international education programme. The programme aims to build the capacity of teachers and school leaders to integrate a range of core skills (critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, digital literacy, global citizenship and student leadership) into the curriculum. This report was part of a broader 20-month evaluation carried out between 2016-2018 that also included the UK. The evaluation was commissioned by The British Council principal office in London and conducted through a partnership between the research consultancy Ecorys and the Robert Owen Centre at the University of Glasgow. Findings in this overseas report are based on fieldwork in Nigeria, Lebanon, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. The first round of fieldwork took place in 2017 and comprised a counterfactual analysis of five Connecting Classrooms (CC) schools and five comparison schools per country. The second round of fieldwork occurred in the first quarter of 2018. These follow-up visits took place at CC schools only, and focused on assessing retention of knowledge, how much further core skills had become embedded in the curriculum, and the sustainability of changes in teaching practices. An additional element of the follow-up visits was the impact of the programme on policy and education stakeholders

Evaluation of Connecting Classrooms in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Lebanon. Wave 2

This report presents the overseas findings from the impact evaluation of the Connecting Classrooms programme, the British Council's international education programme. The programme aims to build the capacity of teachers and school leaders to integrate a range of core skills (critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, digital literacy, global citizenship and student leadership) into the curriculum. This report was part of a broader 20-month evaluation carried out between 2016-2018 that also included the UK. The evaluation was commissioned by The British Council principal office in London and conducted through a partnership between the research consultancy Ecorys and the Robert Owen Centre at the University of Glasgow. Findings in this overseas report are based on fieldwork in Nigeria, Lebanon, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. The first round of fieldwork took place in 2017 and comprised a counterfactual analysis of five Connecting Classrooms (CC) schools and five comparison schools per country. The second round of fieldwork occurred in the first quarter of 2018. These follow-up visits took place at CC schools only, and focused on assessing retention of knowledge, how much further core skills had become embedded in the curriculum, and the sustainability of changes in teaching practices. An additional element of the follow-up visits was the impact of the programme on policy and education stakeholders

Impact Evaluation of Connecting Classrooms Programme. Interim Report to British Council.

This report presents the interim findings from the impact evaluation of the Connecting Classrooms programme, the British Council's international education programme. The programme aims to build the capacity of teachers and school leaders to integrate a range of core skills (critical thinking and problem-solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, digital literacy, global citizenship and student leadership) into the curriculum. The evaluation was conducted through a partnership between the research consultancy, Ecorys and the Robert Owen Centre at the University of Glasgow. Findings are based on fieldwork across five countries (Nigeria, Lebanon, Bangladesh, UK and Ethiopia), chosen to capture the geographic diversity of the programme. In each country, five Connecting Classrooms schools were randomly selected to be included in the evaluation. Schools who agreed to participate were then matched with five non-Connecting Classrooms schools that were broadly similar in terms of key characteristics. Each school was then visited for one day by the research team. The visits included teacher and school leader interviews, classroom observations and student focus groups. The analysis of the data used a counterfactual approach, where outcomes in programme schools were compared against outcomes in control schools, to better understand the changes that may be attributed to the programme and to assess the ‘distance travelled’ within treatment schools. The small sample means that differences cannot be generalised to the whole population of treatment and non-treatment schools. To offset this, a theory-based and realist framework underpinned the analysis, where outcomes were compared against log-frame assumptions, and moderated through an understanding of local context. Throughout the study, a contribution analysis approach was used to understand wider drivers of change, particularly where it became evident that other factors were impacting on core skills teaching within schools