Scaling-up Early Learning in Ethiopia: Exploring the Potential of O-Class

SDG Target 4.2 identifies ‘pre-primary education’ as a strategy to strengthen school readiness and contribute to the quality and outcomes of education, which is supported by the powerful evidence from evaluation research. The challenge faced by many countries is to deliver the proven potential of well-planned, quality programmes to scale. This working paper summarises Ethiopia’s growing commitment to pre-primary education and reports recent Young Lives engagement with the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia and other partners to support scale-up. Ethiopia’s most recent ambitious targets for early learning have been set out in the Fifth Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP V 2015), with pre-primary classes (known as O-Class) within primary schools being seen as the most rapid route to scale-up. The paper reports on the progress and the challenges in delivering ambitious targets. We report key findings from exploratory fieldwork on two key themes, namely the response of Regional Education Bureaus in planning, financing, management and ensuring human capacity for scale-up; and the potential of Ethiopia’s Colleges of Teacher Education to supply sufficient trained teachers to work with young children, especially in the rapidly expanding O- Classes. The final section draws on parallel experiences of other countries, notably Grade R in South Africa, and reports on six key challenges for scale-up; equity; age-appropriateness; cross- sectoral coordination; capacity building; and research and evidence. Other key challenges go beyond the scope of this working paper, notably the models for governance and financing that can deliver quality early education for all. While Ethiopia’s initiative to scale-up O-Class is a welcome indicator of policy commitment to SDG Target 4.2, we conclude that there is a risk that low quality pre-primary programmes will not deliver on the potential of early childhood education and that children (especially poor children) will be the losers

Agropastoralism in Transition: Comparison of Trajectories of Two Communities in Oromia and the Southern Region

This paper compares trajectories of two food-insecure agro-pastoral sites: Gelcha in Eastern Oromia inhabited by Karrayu, and Luqa in South Omo in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) in Tsamay territory. The sites are part of the WIDE (Wellbeing Illbeing Dynamics in Ethiopia) project studying longitudinal changes in 20 Ethiopian rural communities since the mid-1990s. The other 18 sites were part of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey for which baseline data are ava..

Chapter 6 The influence of politics on girls’ education in Ethiopia

In this chapter we consider why education systems have not yet achieved equitable access and learning for all girls, despite high-level government commitment. Taking Ethiopia as a case study, we refer to the ‘domains of power’ framework (Hickey & Hossain, 2019) to explore the influence of politics on progress in girls’ education, focusing on the interaction between the political settlement and the education policy domain. The analysis draws on data from the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Ethiopia programme, including analysis of government documents, actor mapping and interviews with 150 key government stakeholders across seven regions and city administrations in Ethiopia. Adopting a gender lens, we take account of the influence and interaction of informal institutions within the education domain. We find that the education system cannot be considered to be a gender-neutral site given that women continue to be absent from positions of power. In addition, stakeholders’ ideas about the nature of gender roles influence their attitudes, behaviour and actions, holding back progress towards the high-level commitments

Group-based Funeral Insurance in Ethiopia and Tanzania

A funeral is a costly occasion. This paper studies indigenous insurance institutions developed to cope with the high costs of funerals, based on evidence from rural areas in Tanzania and Ethiopia. These institutions are based on well-defined rules and regulations, often offering premium-based insurance for funeral expenses. Increasingly, they are also offering other forms of insurance and credit to cope with hardship. The paper argues that the characteristics and inclusiveness of these institutions make them well-placed as models to broaden insurance provision and other developmental activities in these communities. The history of these institutions is characterised by a resistance to attempts of political capture, and helps to understand their apparent resistance to engage more broadly with NGOs and government agencies. As a result, any attempt to expand their activities will have to be done cautiously.Risk-Sharing, Insurance, Africa, Ethiopia, Tanzania

Moving to Condominium Housing? Views about the Prospect among Caregivers and Children in Addis Ababa and Hawassa – Ethiopia

This paper is based on the second of the three reports resulting from a Young Lives relocation sub-study conducted in four sites in Ethiopia: three in Addis Ababa and one in Hawassa, the capital of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region. This second report focuses on housing and considers how children and caregivers view the prospect of moving to condominium housing, the advantages and risks involved, and their perceptions of their ability to afford the costs. The urban lands..

Membership Based Indigenous Insurance Associationsin Ethiopia and Tanzania

Indigenous insurance associations are a prevalent form of membership based organisations of the poor, at least in the rural areas in Ethiopia and Tanzania surveyed by the authors. Results show how villagers with few links to any formal kind of insurance market have established membership-based indigenous insurance associations to protect themselves against unexpected expenditures, mainly for funerals and hospitalisation. Many of these institutions tend to co-exist within the same community and are based on well-defined rules and regulations, well beyond informal reciprocal relations. They tend to offer premium-based insurance for funeral expenses, as well as, in many cases, other forms of insurance and credit to help address hardship. These groups are completely owned and managed by their members. They were locally initiated and have been continually developing through the actions of their own members, without involvement from the government or donors. Using detailed group membership data linked to household survey data we show that (i) these institutions are widely prevalent in the surveyed areas, (ii) households typically belong to several groups at the same time, (iii) they display a large degree of inclusiveness and (iv) they insure an important part of some shocks, but still leave households prone to the effects of risk

The differential impact of microcredit on rural livelihoods: Case study from Ethiopia

This paper examines the differential impact of credit on rural Ethiopian households. Though credit is generally expected to have a positive impact on household livelihoods, this paper argues that credit affects households differently depending on wealth. Results show that credit failed to enable poor households to move out of poverty and food insecurity, whereas better-off and labour rich households used credit to improve their livelihoods. For poor households, rather than achieving long-term livelihood improvements, access to credit only means short-term consumption smoothing with a risk of being trapped into a cycle of indebtedness. Participation in a safety net programme could, to some extent, break through this cycle, because such participation enhanced the credit-worthiness of poor households. The paper is based on ethnographic research, including a survey of 106 households,and a series of monthly in-depth interviews with a group of 15 households in the district of Ebinat, northern Ethiopia, over an 18-month period, from February 2009 to July 2010

Bibliography on HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia and Ethiopians in the Diaspora: The 2004 Update

No Abstract Available Ethiop.J.Health Dev. Vol.19(1) 2005: 65-8

Adolescence: a second window to address child poverty in Ethiopia

Experiences of adolescence are diverse and changing fast in Ethiopia, a country with the highest proportion (22 per cent) of 15 - 24 year olds in the world. Young Lives research has shown that adolescence provides a second crucial window of intervention to improve children's opportunities and well-being. Yet in Ethiopia there is insufficient investment in development interventions designed to support this age group. This brief, produced in partnership with UNICEF, draws on evidence from Young Lives and offers a range of measures to address this gap. It is part of a series that explores transitions from childhood to young adulthood in Ethiopia