University of St Andrews, Scotland
Research Project

University of St Andrews, Scotland Research Project

Aspire and University of St Andrews in Scotland have been sharing expertise and working on joint projects since 2020. The goal of the partnership is to bring together researchers, practitioners, activists, and policymakers to work across disciplines and borders, to understand, address, and generate evidence-based solutions for education challenges.

In 2020, the partnership secured a UK Research and Innovation grant from the Scottish government to undertake educational research. The grant was completed successfully within timeline and budget and produced a full-length manuscript How to Make Decentralisation Work? Evidence from a Capacity-building Intervention in Local Governance, recently released as a University of St Andrews, Scotland Discussion Paper No. 2206.

Researchers at Aspire and St Andrews have also evaluated the impact of a large-scale self-directed learning intervention carried out during the Covid-19 lockdown to support 100,000 students with little access to digital infrastructure. The research study is titled Teachers on the Move: Evidence from a Large-Scale Learning Intervention during Lockdown, University of St Andrews, Scotland Discussion Paper No. 2205 (currently under review at the Journal of Development Studies).

Finally, the partnership has branched out to include Dr Jeffrey Hughes, previously at the Graduate School for Interdisciplinary Studies at St Andrews but now Director of MBA Programs at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. Dr Hughes is leading an investigation into how school management committees (headmaster, parents, and teachers) in village public schools strategize and make decisions regarding their annual fiscal and development plans.