Leveraging school principals to address learning loss in Indonesia through group and individual targeting

Abstract

In Indonesia, the COVID-19 pandemic-induced school closure led to significant learning loss among students. This study aimed to explore if differentiated remedial teaching can improve the foundational numeracy skills of students and if the improvements are better in schools with added individual tutoring. It also aimed to understand if additional training of school principals would strengthen the results. After implementing the interventions in 25 primary schools to 1545 students for eight weeks, we found that the interventions significantly improved the foundational numeracy skills of students, and teachers in schools with trained principals were more punctual in implementing the intervention.