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A School Support Intervention and Educational Outcomes Among Orphaned Adolescents: Results of a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Kenya

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Abstract

Globally, significant progress has been made in primary school enrollment. However, there are millions of adolescents—including orphans in sub-Saharan Africa—who still experience barriers to remaining in school. We conducted a 4-year cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) (N = 835) in a high HIV prevalence area in western Kenya to test whether providing orphaned adolescents with a school support intervention improves their educational outcomes. The school support intervention consisted of directly paying tuition, exam fees, and uniform costs to primary and secondary schools for those students who remained enrolled. In addition, research staff monitored intervention participants’ school attendance and helped to address barriers to staying in school. This school support intervention had significant positive impacts on educational outcomes for orphaned adolescents. Over the course of the study, school absence remained stable for intervention group participants but increased in frequency for control group participants. Intervention group participants were less likely to drop out of school compared to the control group. Furthermore, the intervention participants were more likely to make age-appropriate progression in grade, matriculate into secondary school, and achieve higher levels of education by the end of the study. The intervention also increased students’ expectations of graduating from college in the future. However, we found no significant intervention impact on primary and secondary school test scores. Results from this cRCT suggest that directly covering school-related expenses for male and female orphaned adolescents in western Kenya can improve their educational outcomes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, 101 Conner Drive, Suite 200, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, USA

    Hyunsan Cho & Bonita J. Iritani

  2. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Renee Catherine Ryberg, Karam Hwang & Lisa D. Pearce

Authors
  1. Hyunsan Cho
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  2. Renee Catherine Ryberg
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  3. Karam Hwang
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  5. Bonita J. Iritani
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Correspondence to Hyunsan Cho.

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Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01MH092215. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This research also received support from the Population Research Training grant (T32 HD007168) and the Population Research Infrastructure Program (P2C HD050924) awarded to the Carolina Population Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

The institutional review boards of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (US) and Moi University (Kenya) reviewed and approved all study procedures. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

We obtained written informed permission from either a surviving parent or custodial guardian and written assent from all participants. Written informed consent was obtained from adolescents age 18 years or older.

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Cho, H., Catherine Ryberg, R., Hwang, K. et al. A School Support Intervention and Educational Outcomes Among Orphaned Adolescents: Results of a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Kenya. Prev Sci 18, 943–954 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-017-0817-x

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