Early Childhood Education Impact Evaluations for the Middle East and North Africa
                            Summary of workshop discussions for ALGERIA
                                     Prepared by: Lauren Pisani

Participants
    1. Lamia Ben Redouane, Diplomat, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
    2. Lauren Pisani, Learning Research Advisor, Save the Children

Policy problems
The delegate from Algeria shared a lot of interesting information about the early childhood education (ECE)
system in the country. Nationally, ECE coverage is quite high and is fully funded by the Ministry of
Education. There is a national curriculum, and teacher training colleges throughout the country. There is
also a national exam that teachers must pass before they are placed in a classroom.

One weakness that the delegate identified was that teachers are no longer required to participate in any kind
of practical application of skills during their training. In past decades, teachers would be required to
complete practical training hours, but currently teachers only receive training in educational theory. So the
delegate felt that a meaningful improvement to pre-service training would be to incorporate an in-classroom
training module.

Summary of evaluation design
For the impact evaluation exercise, the delegate chose to develop a study to evaluate the new practical
teacher training module incorporated into pre-service training programs. The research question being
whether teachers who gain experience working in classrooms before graduating from a training program
show improved practices once they have been placed into full-time classrooms. The outcomes of interest
are teaching practices and children’s development.

We envisioned the assessment as a cluster randomized control trial. Teacher training colleges from
around the country would be randomized into intervention and control groups and then all teachers with a
focus on ECE would be invited to join the study. The delegate noted that the sample would need to be
stratified by geographic region of the country in order to represent all of the conditions present in
different regions. In addition, the delegate suggested designing a two year trial with three data collection
points: pre-test, one-year post-test and two-year post-test. One of the risks identified was drop-out or non-
placement of new teachers after they completed their training program.

In terms of tools for the assessment, the Algerian delegation felt that they would need an observation tool
for evaluating teaching practices, and an assessment of children’s cognitive skills. The specific tools used
for the assessment were not decided upon during the workshop.

Relevance to ongoing World Bank operations

N/A

Client interest

The delegate was well informed about the Algerian education system, despite not being specifically focused
on education herself, and it was a pleasure to work with her. However, she was not the correct person to
have at the workshop to plan an impact evaluation.
Next steps

The next step would be for the delegate to speak with colleagues at the Ministry of Education around the
possibility of creating a practicum training course for pre-service teachers.