Who Is Going Back to School? A Four-Country Rapid Survey in Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan

To understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on re-enrollment for girls and boys, CGD and Malala Fund collaborated to analyze results from a series of rapid surveys that Malala Fund commissioned in Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. These surveys are among the first (to our knowledge) to elicit children’s self-reported likelihood of going back to school and their experiences during the pandemic.

The surveys offer a convenience sample covering respondents that organizations in Malala Fund’s education champion network already work with, except in Ethiopia, where the in-country partner was able to get authorization from the Ministry of Education to access school registers. The surveys, which are a mix of phone and in-person surveys, cover 1,302 respondents in Ethiopia, 3,176 respondents in India, 1,334 respondents in Nigeria, and 1,592 respondents in Pakistan. The surveys were carried out between July and September 2020 while schools were still closed in each of the countries.