Instruments

The project team worked with the Educational Review Office (ERO), the Ministry of Education of Nepal to design the SAA questionnaire for Nepali, Mathematics, and Science to measure student gains in achievement during the school year. We drew on the expertise of ERO to design scientifically valid and reliable measures that are comparable to National Assessment of Student Achievement (NASA) of Nepal measures. Student test scores were collected two times at the beginning and end of the school year namely Baseline Student Achievement Assessment (BSAA) and Endline Student Achievement Assessment (ESAA) respectively. The same assessment instruments were tested in both assessments. The SAA instruments are available hereunder.

Instruments

USCO is designed to collect information on school facilities, services and teaching quality independent of surveys. The main goal of this observation is to verify the information collected through school, teacher, and students 2019 surveys. The research team at the University of Michigan, ISER-N 2010, and local stakeholders, primarily the school inspectors, jointly designed two separate instruments 2010 school observation form and the classroom observation instrument. The school observation measures include school facilities such as a number of buildings, library, laboratory, computer room, playground, toilet, drinking water playground and services such as transportation, hostel, etc. The classroom observation measures specifically focus on teacher-student interactions and teaching quality. Both of these instruments were pretested through 28 school observations and 155 classroom observations.

Instruments

The Student Survey instrument is designed to collect the information on students general background, their knowledge and satisfaction, opportunities to attend school, expectations of success, personal or family attitudes about the value of education and school, their perception of classroom environment, such as sense of safety, friendliness of other students, or support from teachers.

Instruments

The Parent Survey instrument is designed to gather information regarding parents' family background, home environment, financial condition, perception of the value and relevance of education, expectation of educational achievement from children and their future life, etc.

Instruments

The Teacher Survey instrument is designed to collect information on the teachers’ general background, educational qualification and experience, interest in teaching, his/her teaching methodology, satisfaction with working conditions, such as tenure, pay rate, and level of supervision; relationship with the school community, such as interactions with parents, involvement in school committees, and participation in local community events and so on.

Instruments

The Head Teacher Survey instrument is designed to gather information about the head teachers' general background; educational qualification; executive experience in the school; professional engagement with school leadership such as access to and interest in professional development and interest in education; satisfaction with working conditions such as tenure, pay rate, and level. Similarly, information on school background; school community facilities; delegation in the school; formulation of different committees and their influence in school management; compliance monitoring and record-keeping; teaching methodology of teachers; performance; community, parents' participation, and knowledge; school finance, budget allocation, disbursement, and leakage; etc. In addition, the Head Teacher Life History Calendar (LHC) is created in order to collect information about events throughout the head teacher's life, including: age; residence and migration; education and training; occupation: teaching, name of school and address, appointment type, level, salary, allowances; other occupations and earnings, etc.

Instruments

The School History Calendar is designed to collect the past and present information of school. It includes types of school, operation, student number, pre-primary class, curriculum, personnel or staffs, tuition fee, infrastructure, facilities, hostel, income and expenditures, grant received from government and/or other agencies and distribution, etc.

Instruments

The SMC Survey instrument is designed to collect information on the role of the SMC in different school management activities, its strategies to address the problems and improvement in the teaching-learning environment, coordination with the head teacher for various functions, relationship with the community such as interaction with parents and participation in local community events, perception on the role of local government in educational development, etc.

Instruments

The PTA Survey instrument is designed to collect the information on the role of the PTA of the school in different functions such as educational quality improvement, mobilization of resources, school finance monitoring, etc. Similarly, recruitment and work rules of PTA, its influence on decision-making at school, relationship with the community and local government, etc.