Strengthening Teacher Support for Students to Improve Math Learning: Empirical Evidence on A Structured Pedagogy Program in El Salvador

While recent debates on educational development focus on the learning crisis in primary education, the crisis in lower secondary education level is equally profound. Around 58 percent of school-age children worldwide enrolled in lower secondary education are not reaching the minimum proficiency level in mathematics. One of the approaches to improve student learning is a structured pedagogy program that provides schools with teaching and learning materials and other related interventions. The impact of teaching and learning materials on student learning depends upon the support of teachers for students. This study investigates the impact of additional components in a structured pedagogy program that tried to strengthen support of teachers to improve student math learning at the lower secondary level in El Salvador through a randomized controlled trial. The study tracked the same students for two years. While the average one-year impact of the additional component is estimated at around 0.18 standard deviations of test scores, the impact did not persist when the difference of interventions between the treatment and control groups disappeared in the second year of this research. Furthermore, a causal mediation analysis is conducted to investigate the possible causal path of the additional interventions on student math learning.