Study title

This data is sourced from a large-scale, cluster-randomized, school-based intervention program (hereinafter referred to as “Healing Classrooms”) undertaken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 2011 and 2014. Specifically, The Healing Classrooms initiative is an integrated teacher training/curricular intervention that targeted 353 primary schools and approximately 480,000 children in three eastern provinces of the DRC (Katanga, South Kivu, North Kivu) in order to improve children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes. Though the data collection for the impact evaluation finished in 2013, the ESRC/DfID funding provided an opportunity to collect a small amount of additional data – geographic (GIS) coordinates of schools in the South Kivu province – that would allow for consideration of how community spatial and conflict variables moderate the treatment impact on children’s learning and well-being outcomes. This is the data we provide here. Nowhere is access to and quality of education more urgent than in low-resourced states afflicted by ongoing conflict. Of the over 75 million children around the world who are currently out of school, over half live in conflict-affected countries (CACs). Of children in conflict-affected areas who are in school, children are not learning. For example, our own research in three eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) indicates that 91 percent of primary school children in grades 2-4 could not correctly respond to one reading comprehension question of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), a test designed specifically for use in low- and middle-income countries. We take the position that the provision of quality education can mitigate some of the most severe consequences of conflict for children - and potentially help break the intergenerational transmission of poverty and violence - through the effective provision of safe and supportive spaces that promote children's academic and...