CREATE Research

CREATE is a five-year programme of research with distinct stages and planned activities. While these might adapt and change through the course of the programme it is expected that CREATE research will be focused on the following activities and produce the planned outputs, within timeframes provided.

Phase One: 
The emphasis during phase one of CREATE was in mapping access issues, identifying research gaps and developing research relations within the consortium and key audiences. The following activities / outputs were developed:

• Four substantial Country Analytic Reviews (CAR) are now either complete or will be completed in the near future. CARs provide in-depth insight into access issues over a period of time in country and sub-country contexts. The papers draw on CREATE’s zones of exclusion to conceptualise access and review issues specific to access within country settings. These reports will be launched at national level events in 2007.
  
• A series of cross national and thematic reviews of access have been developed and will be launched through the CREATE Pathways to Access Series. These discussion papers look at a range of issues around educational access such as non state providers; health; school processes; decentralisation; school / community linkages; educational financing; expansion of secondary education; and universal primary education policies. The cross national reviews will continue to be developed through CREATE.
  
• Three review papers on educational access in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been developed. These will be developed into a South Asia regional paper (along with inputs from India and Bangladesh).
• An extensive annotated bibliography was developed and made available on the CREATE website. The database specifically draws on issues of access to education.
  
• Partners have produced framework research plans for community and school based studies in several districts in each country, and develop draft instruments to allow empirical work to commence in 2007.

Phase Two:
The emphasis during stage two of CREATE is on data collection, analysis and the production of outputs. Central to this are CREATE’s Community / School Studies

Community / School Studies
Community / School Studies (ComSS) will take the form of community/school level empirical enquiries into meaningful access in a variety of locations in Ghana, India, South Africa and India. The ComSS will provide insight into factors which determine access, inclusions and exclusions from schooling. School community level data collection will take place on cohorts of children of different ages/grades to trace patterns and processes of exclusion at both the collective and individual level using weighted sample household surveys, and school/class enumeration etc on an appropriate scale. These will include both those enrolled and at risk of exclusion and those excluded. Perceptions of the benefits and costs of attendance will be accumulated along with data on actual costs and the livelihood activities of those excluded. Communities (three to six in each country) will be selected containing a range of primary and secondary schools chosen to be illustrative of areas where access is known to be a problem. Secondary analysis of EMIS and household survey data will assist in establishing baselines and selecting communities.

While studies will vary in scope and emphasis, there are common areas of interest.

• The children tracked over the course of the study will fall into CREATE’s zones of exclusion. For example: Zone One - children who have never attended school will be followed and the dynamics of exclusion studied. Exclusionary factors might include: lack of physical access, poor health and nutrition, disability, barriers to registration, reception year enrolment practices, household decision making practices, etc. Zone Two – children who have been to school but have dropped out will be a focus of the research. CREATE will look at why and how children drop out, identifying life histories of drop outs and its precursors (irregular attendance, late enrolment, silent exclusion, selection exams which push out children etc). Zone Three – children who are deemed to be at risk of dropping out from school, often those who are irregular attenders, low achievers etc. will be tracked through the research process.  CREATE researchers will try to understand processes of inclusion/exclusion, push–pull factors and identify ways in which children may stay in school. Zone Four – children who complete primary schooling, but fail to make the transition to secondary will be studied. Additionally in some context looking at secondary drop outs and at risk children in secondary in some contexts (South Africa in particular) will be a strong concern.  Zone Five – children who have dropped out of secondary school, and Zone Six – children at risk in secondary school, will also be tracked at different sites as the opportunities arise depending on their significance in each country context.

• A sample of in-school / out-of-school children will be followed over the course of the research. In school the first phase of data collection is likely to focus on children in only some grades. This means that the ComSS can provide an opportunity to follow cohorts through registration, enrolment, promotion, completion and transition to secondary over several years.
  

• A series of overarching research questions guide the ComSS.
  

• By the end of 2008 the research should have: Mapped access and exclusion (profiling patterns, establishing baselines, accumulating retrospective data, identifying key perspectives of stakeholders, locating better practices etc); Explored the determinants of exclusion from basic education (developing causal insights, evaluating promising initiatives, tracing the excluded and charting barriers to re-entry etc); Developed understanding of the dynamics of improving access to education (two year dynamics of exclusion/inclusion, analysis of crossing thresholds, life history of the two year cohort in each community, action planning based on research etc).

The research will deploy a full range of research methods to explore access using surveys, observation, interviews, self report school life histories, time surveys and diaries, secondary data analysis, literature searches and documentary analysis, key informant and focus group discussions, and other methods that may be appropriate. Household survey instruments and structured / semi-structured interview schedules (for teachers, head teachers and children in and out of school) have been developed and are being piloted in the early stages of 2007. Other activities and research methodologies are likely to take place and be used after baseline data has been established.

After the piloting of data collection instruments in the first half of 2007, several data collection periods are envisaged.  A Framework Research Plan for the ComSS was produced by partner institutes in 2006, and a finalised research plan early 2007. An interim report will be produced mid 2007 and a synthetic report November, 2007. The data sets developed in 2007 will provide the basis for continued data collection in 2008 to develop a dynamic picture of changing patterns and allow in depth thematic enquiries.

As the ComSS develops papers will be written from the data on specific issues. These could include enrolment/registration/attendance practices; school community interface issues; supply side constraints on access (e.g. distance to school, teacher provision and absenteeism etc); demand side constraints (direct costs and household income, lack of perceived utility etc); local educational administration and school management; gendered patterns of exclusion; household strategies; etc. These outputs have yet to be determined and will grow from the ComSS as data is accumulated.

Secondary Analyses
The baseline secondary analyses seek to make use of existing national and international data sets. These include Household surveys and EMIS and Sector Review data that may exist. There are several purposes: to profile access across the zones of exclusion at country / sub country level; to quantitatively confirm or re-estimate the magnitudes of exclusion of different groups of children in order to subsequently trace how this changes over the period of CREATE; to guide and suggest subjects for enquiry in the ComSS; to identify opportunities to buy-in to existing data collection systems e.g. through inclusion of additional survey items in household surveys, longitudinal studies etc; and to identify opportunities to improve data systems and related indicators used in policy dialogue and develop indicators that may be useful for planning and administration at different educational levels.

Thematic Studies
Each partner institute will elect to develop thematic studies in areas judged to be of special importance to access in their particular contexts. These thematic studies might use data from the community/school spine but would seek to go beyond this and into more depth on specific issues. Their may have a national of cross national focus. Possible thematic issues could be related to gender and social exclusion, disability, health and nutrition (including HIV/AIDS), alternative modes of provision, enrolment and registration practices, promotion and repetition practices and age grade progression, managing attendance, barriers to drop in, transition to secondary, cost and finance and access. 

Phase Three:
Phase Three will focus on getting CREATE’s research messages to its target audiences and will occur in the run up to the MDG and EFA reviews of 2010. Clear policy messages will be derived from research studies and interactions with stakeholders. These will be distilled into formats appropriate to target audiences and CREATE research will feed into the reviews of the MDGs and EFA.

Communications activities are integrated into this whole process. In Phase One CREATE was launched in partner institute, and subsequently the Country Analytic Review was launched. All products are available on the CREATE website and many are available in hard copy. A communications infrastructure has been set up which includes individuals from all country partners, co-ordinated centrally. The CREATE website has been established and a searchable bibliographic database on access to education has been established online.
Monitoring and evaluation and quality assurance are also important to the CREATE research teams. These take place on a continuing basis, in a variety of ways. All partner institutes complete monitoring reports every quarter which map activities carried out, provide plans for the next stages and produce information on communications events and outputs. All CREATE reports are reviewed by a member of the CREATE team, as well as an independent reviewer. Additionally country-specific reports, such as the Country Analytic Review are read by the National Reference Group. Comments and feedback are provided to authors, and reports amended accordingly. The National Reference Groups in South Africa, India, Ghana and Bangladesh also provide advice on the programme of research and how it could be made most appropriate to local contexts. Partner Institute Co-ordinator meetings take place around twice a year to check the progress of CREATE and plan future activities and strategies across CREATE. Finally, the Consortium Advisory Group meets annually to check progress and advise on future direction.