Save the Children Cash for Education Impact Evaluation in Malawi

Save the Children implemented a Catch-up Club (CuC) project, funded by the Swedish Postcode Lottery (SPL), in 20 schools in Lilongwe, Malawi. CuCs are a short-term, data-driven intervention to build foundational skills in literacy, numeracy and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), during learning disruptions, as seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted education for over 1.6 billion children, including 8 million in Malawi.

The project provided remedial education, layered with child protection support for at-risk children, and cash and voucher assistance (CVA) to economically vulnerable families. Child protection and CVA are integrated with the education and SEL components of CuCs to address protection, social and economic barriers to learning that may affect children’s participation in the clubs and school. There remain gaps in evidence both at the global and at country level on the impact of CVA on child learning outcomes. Hence, SC conducted a quasi-experimental longitudinal panel study to evaluate the impact of CVA in addition to education programming on improving learning outcomes (remedial reading) in children grades 3-5 in Malawi.