Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26671345›Full record

Trial reportTrials2015

Remedial after-school support classes offered in rural Gambia (The SCORE trial): study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial.

Peter Boone, Alpha Camara, Alex Eble, Diana Elbourne, Samory Fernandes, Chris Frost, Chitra Jayanty, Maitri Lenin, Ana Filipa Silva

Abstract readRandomized Controlled Trial
In one paragraph

Trial report in Trials, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

9 authors.

Peter BooneEffective Intervention, London, UK. pb@effint.org.
Alpha CamaraEffective Intervention, London, UK. Effective5@effint.net.
Alex EbleBrown University and Effective Intervention, Banjul, Gambia. alexander_eble@brown.edu.
Diana ElbourneLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Providence, USA. Diana.elbourne@lshtm.ac.uk.
Samory FernandesEffective Intervention, London, UK. shayras2004@gmail.com.
Chris FrostLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Providence, USA. Chris.Frost@lshtm.ac.uk.
Chitra JayantyEffective Intervention, London, UK. cj@effint.org.
Maitri LeninEffective Intervention, London, UK. maitri.effectiveintervention@gmail.com.
Ana Filipa SilvaEffective Intervention, London, UK. fs@effint.org.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundLow education levels are endemic in much of the developing world, particularly in rural areas where traditional government-provided public services often have difficulty reaching beneficiaries. Providing trained para-teachers to teach regular after-school remedial education classes has been shown to improve literacy and numeracy in children of primary school age residing in such areas in India. This trial investigates whether such an intervention can also be effective in a West African setting with similarly low learning levels and difficult geographic access. METHODS/

design

designcluster-randomized controlled trial. Clusters: villages or groups of villages with 15-300 households and at least 15 eligible children in the Lower River and North Bank Regions of The Gambia.

participantschildren born between 1 September 2007 and 31 August 2009 planning to enter the first grade, for the first time, in the 2015-2016 school year in eligible villages. We anticipate enrolling approximately 150 clusters of villages with approximately 6000 children as participants.

interventiona program providing remedial after-school lessons, focusing on literacy and numeracy, 5 to 6 days a week for 3 years to eligible children, based on the intervention evaluated in the Support To Rural India's Public Education System (STRIPES) trial (PLoS ONE 8(7):e65775). CONTROL: both the intervention and control groups will receive small bundles of useful materials during annual data collection as recompense for their time. If the education intervention is shown to be cost-effective at raising learning levels, it is expected that the control group villages will receive the intervention for several years after the trial results are available. OUTCOMES: the primary outcome of the trial is a composite mathematics and language test score. Secondary outcomes include school attendance, enrollment, performance on nationally administered exams, parents' spending on education, spillover learning to siblings and family members, and school-related time use of parents and children. Subgroup analyses of the primary outcome will also be carried out based on ethnic group, gender, distance from the main highway, parents' education level, and school type. The trial will run by independent research and implementation teams and supervised by a Trial Steering Committee. DISCUSSION: Along with the overall impact of the intervention, we will conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis. There are no major ethical issues for this study.

trial registrationCurrent controlled trials ISRCTN12500245 . 1 May 2015.

Indexed as

Child DevelopmentLearningLiteracyRural PopulationChildComprehensionCost-Benefit AnalysisDeveloping CountriesEducational MeasurementEducational StatusFemaleGambiaHumansLanguageMaleMathematical Concepts

Identifiers

PMID26671345
PMCPMC4681032

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.