New RCT Finds Educate! Graduates Are Better Off Than Their Peers
Rigorous Evaluation Finds that Educate! Leads to Improvements in Soft Skills, Gender-Related Outcomes, and Other Positive Impacts for Youth
“The Educate! program improves a student’s ability to set goals, as well as their ability to organize themselves and others to achieve these goals.”
Educate! is committed to doing what works. Fundamentally, we are working to create a model of education that is tied to, and directly accountable for, improved life outcomes. We invest deeply in rigorously evaluating, and then innovating and improving upon, our model to ensure that every dollar leads to the maximum impact for the youth we serve.
Out of that commitment, Educate! partnered with researchers from the University of California-Berkeley, the World Bank, and Innovations for Poverty Action to conduct a follow-up to our Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) in Uganda which measured our impact on students four years after completing the Educate! program.
The evaluation found strong impacts on soft skills (improved grit, creativity, self-efficacy), gender-related outcomes (less domestic violence, fewer sexual partners, fewer children, more egalitarian views), and educational attainment (increased secondary school completion, increased tertiary enrollment for women, greater likelihood of selecting majors with higher earning potential). There was also evidence suggesting Educate! grads are doing better in their studies. After Educate!, girls were essentially as likely to graduate from secondary school as boys – virtually closing the gender gap.
What We Learned
The primary purpose of this evaluation was to understand whether the Educate! program led to skill upgrading, and if so, if that translates into improved outcomes in the areas of education, gender equity, the labor market, and ultimately a higher life trajectory.
We learned that four years after Educate!, our graduates are better off than their peers. They have obtained improved transferable/soft skills, are pursuing greater educational attainment, are choosing technical degrees in tertiary, and are seeing improved gender equity-related outcomes. These large and durable shifts in skills, coupled with significant improvements in education and gender-related outcomes, suggest that participating in the Educate! Experience sets youth on a higher trajectory that should lead to long-term life outcomes. We believe this is the first evaluation in Africa to causally link soft skills to improvements in life outcomes related to education and gender equity.
Educate! is committed to continual learning, and we intend to incorporate key takeaways from this evaluation into our model. As part of this evaluation, the researchers have also secured funding for a longer-term follow-on to continue to learn as much as we can about our impact over time. With little evidence about the long-term impacts of youth interventions out there, we hope that this study will be valuable not only for Educate!, but for others working to improve life outcomes for youth.
