Education for Children and Youth Project Quarterly Report Third Quarter – April 1st to June 30th, 2019

ECYP is part of USAID's Education Strategy and is implemented by the Foundation for Comprehensive Education of El Salvador (FEDISAL). The project supports the expansion and implementation of the Full-Time Inclusive School approach, aiming to support the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology in El Salvador (MINEDUCYT) in its efforts to expand access to education among children and youth living in municipalities with high violence and crime rates in El Salvador. The 2018 school census published by MINEDUCYT reported that 542,237 students were enrolled from 4th to 9th grade in public schools. Among these students, 277,785 (48.3% female and 51.7% male) were enrolled in upper primary and 264,452 (48.5% female and 51.5% male) in lower secondary. The dropout rate is 3.9% at the upper primary level and 6.1% at the lower secondary level. The project focused its efforts mainly on implementing the different interventions planned to be carried out in the 195 schools during the ECYP extension. The Full-Time Inclusive School approach was expanded to approximately 770 upper-primary and lower-secondary schools to enhance academic achievement and increase ninth-grade completion, benefiting at least 157 students from 4th to 9th grade. Implementation of Objective 1: Significantly improve learning of lower-secondary students, resulted in 170 schools developing their institutional self-evaluation and factual analysis processes, enabling them to prepare their corresponding improvement plans. Among these 170 schools, 14 are located in the department of San Salvador, 4 in Sonsonate, 2 in La Paz, 2 in Santa Ana, 2 in San Miguel, and 1 in La Libertad. The pedagogical committees of 15 schools in Zacatecoluca continued to reinforce their school proposal to respond to the identified needs of their students in language and mathematics. ECYP analyzed the 442 tests applied in 16 schools, which constituted the baseline to measure progress in youth's academic achievement. The results of the analysis showed that students in the intervention schools demonstrated better learning outcomes compared to the control group. In addition to the implementation of Objective 1, the project also focused on implementing other activities, including the workshop "Applying active methodologies in Moral, Urbanity and Civic" for teachers specialized in Social Sciences, and the National Literacy Program implemented by MINEDUCYT, which provided learning certificates to over 200 people in the department of Usulután. The project also organized a writing workshop for language and literature primary teachers from the country's 14 departments, aiming to provide them with tools and strategies to encourage students to write and express themselves through writing topics. The project's implementation progress was monitored and evaluated through regular meetings with the project team, stakeholders, and beneficiaries. The project's achievements and activities were presented in this quarterly report, which highlights the progress made towards achieving the project's objectives and goals.