TaRL/Catch Up – Improving Implementation Fidelity at Scale

Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) has improved learning in multiple studies. However, at scale, its impact on learning is often hampered by limited attendance, driven by children’s absence from school, and implementation frictions that prevent schools from holding sessions. A key scaling question is then how governments and implementing partners can improve attendance and implementation fidelity in TaRL, and how doing so changes its effectiveness. We address this question within Zambia's national TaRL program (locally known as Catch Up), where de Barros and Lubozha (2026) shows that the program is effective but that only one-third of students attend Catch Up sessions on a given day. This project combines Zambia's Home-Grown School Meals (HGSM) program – an approach shown to boost attendance in school – with a attendance-verification intervention at no cost to teachers (via mobile airtime reimbursement) for holding planned sessions and sending verified pictures of the learning level register. We randomize our attendance verification intervention across 125 schools in Luapula Province, building on a large-scale ongoing HGSM randomization supported by the Government of Zambia, WFP, and the World Bank. Our evaluation will measure the impacts of these interventions on attendance in TaRL Sessions, TaRL implementation, and foundational skill attainment.