Reachability Index

• Is a Part 1 of the Learning continuity index
• Quantifies maximum number of children who can actually be reached by each education policy for remote learning.
• For this analysis, data from the UNESCO/UNICEF/WB Survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures will be combined with MICS, DHS and other household survey data.
• Information on actions taken by governments to continue the education by providing classes via radio, TV or internet, will be taken from the joint survey
• It will be combined with household survey data on child access to those types of technology to indicate the actual reach of the implemented policies.
• The indicator provides within and between country comparison

Country availability

• At the current stage, 13 countries that have both data from the joint survey and MICS6 were identified:
  • Bangladesh
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Georgia
  • Ghana
  • Iraq
  • Kiribati
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Lao People’s Democratic Republic
  • Pakistan
  • Sierra Leone
  • Suriname
  • Togo
  • Tunisia
• For piloting the index, 3 countries depending on the data quality and availability were chosen: Kyrgyzstan, Lao PDR, Tunisia

Methodology

• A sub sample of children attending pre-primary, primary, lower and upper secondary school was subset from MICS6 data
• MICS6 was merged with the variables from the joint questionnaire on remote learning delivery
• For each delivery technology (radio, TV, online) 2 variables were created in the merged dataset:
  • target (a child is a target of a policy) and
  • reached (a policy reaches a child)
• If a country implements remote learning policy at the certain education level, the variables target for a child studying at this level are marked as 1, otherwise 0. I.e., variable target_radio equals 1 if a country implements radio-based remote learning for a primary school students and a child attends primary school
• If variable target for a certain technology equals 1 and a child has the respective household asset, the variable reached equals 1, meaning that a policy reaches a child, otherwise 0.

Aggregated data

Potential analyses

The result of this initial analysis will be disaggregated data on which children studying at different education levels (pre-primary, primary, lower or upper secondary) are reached by remote learning policies by various characteristics:

• Sex
• Area of residence
• Socio-economic status (wealth groups)
• Administrative region (for within-country analysis)
• Ethnicity
• Child functioning status

Further steps

• Carry out the analysis for all MICS6 countries that match with the joint questionnaire
• Due to the low number of the MICS6 countries with the data released, shift to MICS5/DHS depending on the availability and latest source
• It will allow us to end up with approx. 80 countries in Reachability Index