Client and Partners: ELMA Foundation and the Aga Khan Foundation Uganda

Description: The ELMA Foundation is supporting the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) to improve early childhood services in three districts in Uganda and to strengthen the role of district education officials to coordinate and monitor the delivery of early childhood services. A key goal of AKF’s programs is to demonstrate how to improve critical services for children through existing government and community structures. Central to this goal is evidence that the program has a positive impact on children’s learning outcomes and school readiness, caregivers’ classroom practices and the learning environment.

Ichuli was contracted to evaluate children’s school readiness in 80 early childhood development centers across three districts in central Uganda. Ichuli conducted a baseline study in early 2018 and an endline study two years later, at the end of the 2019 school year. The evaluations will focus on assessing children’s school readiness, the learning environment and caregiver practices. Ichuli is responsible for developing a data collection plan and system that reaches all treatment and comparison sites; identifying, training and managing a team of enumerators; and analyzing, reporting and presenting final conclusions to inform program implementation and scale.