The 193 member states of the United Nations, nearly every country in the world, have stated goals of universal primary education. These efforts are working; globally, an estimated 90% of school-age children now attend primary school. But simply attending school does not necessarily mean that a child is learning, especially in low- and middle-income countries where the educational infrastructure may be inadequate. In low-income countries, as many as 90% of 10-year-olds are unable to read proficiently, despite schooling.
A new study by researchers at the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis shows that a community-based, participatory school-improvement program can raise academic achievement and help children develop life skills such as problem-solving and communication skills, even in times of conflict and crisis.
The program was implemented at schools in three rural provinces in Afghanistan from 2018 through 2021, during which time the country was at war, the COVID-19 pandemic caused schools to shut down for more than six months, and the U.S.-supported government fell and was replaced with an Islamic theocracy led by the Taliban. Nonetheless, students at schools that completed the program showed meaningful gains in life skills, self-efficacy, and basic literacy compared with pupils at schools that did not have the program, with girls benefiting more than boys. The results are published in the International Journal of Educational Development.
“We showed that if you support local actors in solving their own issues, you can have an impact not only on academic skills, but also on life skills — their capacity to solve problems, to communicate with others, to defend their own ideas, to be citizens in a free society,” said Jean-Francois Trani, MS, MPhil, PhD, a professor and the lead investigator on the study. “And what’s more, this method worked even under the most challenging conditions. We were able to improve children’s learning even as they and their families were coping with extreme poverty, war and political unrest.”
Getting an education in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, is a significant challenge, especially for girls. Only about half of school-age Afghan children are enrolled in school. Fewer girls than boys are sent to primary school, and all girls have been banned from attending school past sixth grade since the Taliban took over in 2021. Children who do get the chance to go to school often still struggle to learn. Many schools do not have enough classrooms, educational supplies or trained teachers, and traditional instruction methods rely heavily on rote repetition and memorization.
In an effort to improve the quality of education in Afghanistan, Trani and colleagues came up with a two-part program. Part one involved engaging community stakeholders — parents, teachers, school leadership, community leaders, and the children themselves — in identifying and coming up with interventions to solve the problems that kept children from learning effectively, through guided community-based system dynamics workshops.
“We started each workshop by asking, ‘What does it mean to learn in school?’” Trani said. “Everyone agreed that all children could and should learn. So then we asked, ‘What are the barriers to learning?’ and ‘What can we do to lower those barriers?’”
In these workshops, community members drew up a visual map of the school system and then developed school-improvement action plans. Plans included projects such as building classrooms, bathrooms and libraries; instituting regular parent-teacher meetings, teacher trainings, and open-house events for parents; and reducing child labor responsibilities. The researchers — together with the nongovernmental organizations Norwegian Afghanistan Committee and the Solidarity Committee for Afghanistan (formerly known as the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan) — provided support to help school communities implement their action plans, but school community members led the efforts and took responsibility for achieving their plans.
Part two involved training teachers in a child-centered pedagogical method known as Project-Based Learning, which has been shown to be effective at improving educational outcomes in many different settings.
A total of 83 primary schools across three provinces took part in the study, with 40 participating in the program and 43 continuing to operate as usual for comparison. A total of 2,519 children in grades 3 and 5 were followed for three years. To measure the success of the program, the researchers looked at both academic achievement (reading literacy, mathematical literacy, general knowledge, and arithmetic problem-solving and logical reasoning) and development of social-emotional skills (self-efficacy, resilience and life skills such as problem-solving, communication, and decision-making).
All of the schools that participated in the program showed improvement in learning, but schools that fully carried out the program — completing all of the community action ideas and regularly using project-based lessons — saw the biggest and most lasting improvements. In addition, the program was cost-effective, at just $381 per student over the three years.
“Education, health, and welfare go hand in hand, especially in low-income countries,” Trani said. “Educated mothers take better care of their own health, and they are more knowledgeable about what to do during pregnancy and how to feed their kids and protect them from infection, so they raise healthier children. Educated kids grow up to get better jobs and to be more prosperous. They may be farmers like their parents are, but they are farmers who know how to manage their resources better and are better positioned to negotiate with buyers and sellers. Education gives people the tools to build a better life for themselves. So schools are essential everywhere in the world, but they have to actually deliver the quality education they are meant to provide.”
This video about the school-improvement program was created by the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee.
Trani JF, Zhu Y, Bechara S, Bakhshi P, Kaplan I, Babulal G, Zha W, Rawab H, Brown D, Raghavan R. The impact of a participatory intervention to improve learning outcomes and reduce school-based discrimination and community stigma in primary rural schools of Afghanistan: A cluster control randomized trial. International Journal of Educational Development. September 20, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2025.103409
This work was funded by the Economics and Social Research Council, grant number ES/P005799/1, by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, and the Swedish International Development Agency.
Writer
Tamara Schneider, MPH, PhD, is the senior science writer and assistant director of communications for WashU School of Public Health. She holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biophysics & biochemistry and in sociology from Yale University, a master’s in public health from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in biomedical science from the University of California, San Diego.