Understanding the ICAN Foot Soldiers

By Winny Cherotich, Senior Program Officer, PAL Network

“I could not believe that some children in grade five cannot do simple math tasks.” Vincent reflected. “I had never assessed children before and thought that as long as one has gone to school s/he should be able to do at least the basics.”

Vincent is one of the more than 800 volunteers that traversed 779 rural communities across 13 countries in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Like many other volunteers, this was a revelation about the learning crisis. He spent over 4,200 minutes cumulatively conducting the actual assessment using the International Common Assessment of Numeracy (ICAN) in Mwala Sub-County in Kenya. Even with the challenges of distances between one sampled household to the other, Vincent followed every step to ensure that all sampled households were surveyed and children aged 5-16 years assessed. In some cases, they had to make a call back if the sampled household members could only have time for the survey later in the day. Across the 13 countries, the volunteers assessed over 20,000 children in their homes.

On July 9, 2020, The People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network launched the ICAN Report. Over 400 participants attended the launch via various online platforms such as Zoom, Facebook, and Skype. It was an exciting moment for the PAL Network members to share results from the first ever-common assessment. ICAN is a journey that began towards the end of 2017 with a test development workshop, examining each PAL Network member’s grades 1 to 3 curricula, agreeing on a common process and a common tool, and using it to collect evidence from more than 15,000 households. This could not have been possible without the efforts of the volunteers.

Who was the ICAN volunteer?

PAL Network members work with volunteers to collect data from the households – a practice that has continued from citizen-led assessments. ICAN volunteers had at least 12 years of schooling for them to partake in the process. A second critical criterion was the ability to complete the ICAN test. Additionally, in some of the participating countries, the volunteers came from the sampled villages, easing their entry into the households and quick identification of households. The age and gender distribution of the volunteers varied across the countries as shown in the figures below:

Nicaragua and Bangladesh had the most number of volunteers aged 25 years and below, while Pakistan and Mexico had the highest number of volunteers aged over 40 years.

Mozambique and India registered a higher number of male volunteers while Mali and Nepal registered a higher number of female volunteers.

The district training snapshot

It took the volunteers at least 24 hours of training to get them ready for the survey. They attended both theory session, field practical sessions, and to ascertain their understanding of the task ahead of them, they undertook a test.

What did their task entail? 

After training, the volunteers set out to the communities where they;

• Met the community leader, explained about ICAN, and completed the community/village information sheet
• Conducted village mapping/household listing and sampled 20 households to be surveyed
• Recorded information of all children 5-16 years and assessed them using the ICAN Tool
• Recorded information about the household facilities
• Completed the survey in all the 20-sampled households, checked for correctness of data before submitting the survey booklets.

The task of the volunteers cannot be underestimated. They made it possible for members of the PAL Network to demonstrate the feasibility of using a common tool to assess numeracy competencies across different contexts.