1.1 Introduction

The Assessment of Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE) is an initiative of the Values and Life Skills (VaLi) thematic group of RELI, the Regional Education Learning Initiative, which latter comprises over 70 East African organisations, with the goal of ensuring learning for all. ALiVE’s goals as of date of writing were to advocate for education through the following objectives:

  • Develop context-relevant, open-source tools for assessing life skills in East Africa;

  • Undertake a household assessment targeting adolescent aged 13 to 17 years, both in and out of school (generate the evidence);

  • Use the evidence to draw attention to and increase awareness on the worth of these competencies among stakeholders (public policy advocacy);

  • Elevate RELI-VaLi to a regional community of practice on methods and measurement of life skills, replicable at the national and regional levels for sustainability (transnational alliance building);

  • Enhance peer learning and feedback among the RELI member organizations working on improving learning outcomes in East Africa (learning, sharing & capacity strengthening.) https://reliafrica.org/alive/

From 2020 onward, ALiVE, through its 47 team members, has undertaken studies to contextualise understandings of life skills and values, developed tools to measure these, and assessed over 45,000 adolescents through household-based assessment. ALiVE’s approach has been borne from serious scholarship and research, the experience of its members in household-based assessment through Uwezo (a survey of children’s literacy and numeracy competencies), and its learning journey in assessment. Between April and August 2022, adolescents were assessed across a variety of competencies, including life skills, a value, digital literacy, and literacy, in Kenya (17,276), Tanzania mainland (14,645), Tanzania Zanzibar (2447), and Uganda (11,074). Note that Zanzibar’s education system is distinct from that of Tanzania mainland, and so participated in ALiVE as a fourth educational system.

The output of these processes are the data that will inform ALiVE, its partners, and the ministries of education in the three countries about the proficiencies of 13–17 year olds. Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have all re-visited their curricula in recent years in order to meet the learning goals that their governments espouse. These data provide another tool, usable by ministries of education, to fine tune curricula, teaching strategies, and the enabling educational environments.

An outcome of these processes is an increasingly skilled professional workforce, which has the capacity to translate learning goals into assessment tools, instructional strategies, and policy guidance.

The ‘great divide’, as signified by terms such as the ‘global south’ is bearing unexpected fruit. As developing economies take charge of their educational directions, they increasingly self-reference. One symptom of this shift lies in research and practice that adopts a ‘contextualisation’ approach. The approach, epitomised by the ALiVE initiative, does not seek the substantive guidance of aid and development providers from high income economies, notwithstanding a U.S. centric perspective that the latter are responsible for empowering and enabling ‘locally led development’ (Ingram, 2022).

Another symptom of this shift is the adoption of educational directions consistent with local analysis of needs, rather than accepting the educational imperatives of aid providers. For example, ALiVE’s exploration of life skills and values represents a perspective on education that is distinctly different from that of some global agencies that literacy and numeracy are what constitutes ‘learning’ and accounts for ‘learning poverty’ meaning those unable to read and understand a simple story (World Bank et al., 2022) in low- and middle-income economies. The information about importance of a broader set of skills dates back to at least 2001 (e.g., Heckman & Rubinstein, 2001), to the effect that ‘non-cognitive’ skills contribute to determination not only of educational achievement, but also income. That OECD’s ‘Programme of International School Assessment’ (PISA) has included competencies beyond language, mathematics and science in all rounds since 2003, is further testimony to the acknowledgement by OECD members that education indeed requires more than these foundational competencies. Although student attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours such as self-regulation and learning strategies were originally captured within PISA from student questionnaires, the OECD has moved increasingly into measurement of ‘transferable’ or broader skills such as problem solving, collaborative and creative problem solving, and global competence. Reflecting on these trends, there is strong evidence of countries ‘mainstreaming’ many of these competencies within their curricula through areas such as global citizenship education (Benavot & Williams, 2023; UNESCO, 2021) notwithstanding little evidence of actual teaching and learning of related knowledge and skills.

The achievement of the ALiVE initiative does not lie simply in the fact that over 45,000 adolescents across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have been assessed, but in the manner of its undertaking. Key features of this undertaking are:

  • That a loose consortium of education stakeholders, primarily from non-government not for profit organisations, but including government and the higher education sector, developed the assessment program in its entirety;

  • That the assessments were undertaken at household level in rural and urban areas, across isolated and in inner city areas;

  • That tools to assess three life skills and one value were developed from ground up by a collaborative group; and

  • That the tools were found to have sound psychometric qualities.

Each of these features signifies a major shift in the coordination and directing of aid and development activities. The enterprise was designed and led by in-country professionals, whose intent was to gather large scale data on life skills in order to influence policy, and to learn by doing.

1.1.1 What Are These Competencies?

The ‘21st century skills’ shift has gained pace in many national education systems over the past decade. Notwithstanding its ubiquity, there remains confusion about what exactly this term means, and what competencies and characteristics gather under its umbrella. A review of terminology that was in use around 2016 to describe twenty-first century skills included more than 50 terms. The review was part of an initiative which was then referred to as Skills for a Changing World (Care et al., 2017). The fact that such a review was even necessary reflects the confusion generated by the plethora of human characteristics and competencies that educators, employers, governments, and global institutions regard as essential for today’s young people. Table 1.1 presents a re-interpretation of some of the review’s more common terms.

Table 1.1 Some common terms associated with ‘breadth of skills’
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The categorising descriptors provide a perspective somewhat different than the substantive classifications (such as social-emotional, cognitive, affective, etc.) that are frequently used. The identification of ‘temporal’ in particular is interesting because it self-consciously acknowledges the criticism often levelled at the ‘21st century skills’ movement—that this term implies relevance only to this current century, whereas the competencies have clearly been relevant across centuries. ‘Outcome’ is a clear reference to the functionality of skills in daily societal life. The ‘priority/importance’ category is also self-evident, in that these terms claim for pre-eminence of the skills. ‘Process’ skills link nicely to the education space as well a functioning in daily life. The ‘relationship’ category is one which has high visibility in academic research (particularly in discussion of problem solving) and in some regions (e.g. South East Asia). The category includes several terms which emphasise the generalisable and adaptive nature of the skills. A final category that illuminates discussion about terminology is ‘counterweight’. The category explicitly identifies what these skills are considered ‘not’ to be, and it is notable that some of its terms can carry negative connotations.

Table 1.1 draws predominantly on use of the term ‘skills’, but it is clear from incorporation of many of these proficiencies now included in curriculum frameworks world-wide that this is not the only, nor necessarily the preferred, term. For example, the Australian curriculum refers to such proficiencies as ‘general capabilities’, Kenya as ‘core competencies’, Uganda as ‘generic skills’, Singapore as ‘21st century competencies’, and Zambia as ‘competences’ (and values). There are naturally many other terms in languages other than English. This chapter adopts the term ‘generic competencies’ when appropriate to do so.

The ALiVE initiative adopted the terminology of ‘life skills’ and ‘values’. This terminology presents some difficulties for communication, both within East Africa (Joynes et al., 2019) and more widely (Global Partnership for Education, 2020). The term ‘life skills’ has frequently been used in Africa over the past decade to describe technical-vocational skills, and also by the aid and development sector and by ministries of education. In the latter case, its use has frequently been in the context of acquisition of knowledge and skills to deal with problems, most visibly associated with education about HIV AIDS, and drug and substance abuse, as well as with strategies to protect oneself from abuse by others (Akyeampong, 2014). This association may pose a communications and dissemination risk to perceptions of the competencies as holistic and adaptive, rather than as protective factors alone.

Classifications of the human characteristics and competencies that populate a ‘breadth of skills’ are multitudinous and varied; and there is no one classification that has been accepted universally by national education systems, uni- and multi-lateral organisations dedicated to improvement of education provision, or workforce analysts and employers. Over the past three decades, classifications have varied from the simple to the complex. For example, we see the cognitive versus non-cognitive dichotomy promoted by Heckman and colleagues (e.g., Kautz et al., 2014); to the Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Values and Ethics (KSAVE: Binkley et al., 2012) framework; through to the nature of global competence including knowledge, skills, attitudes and values (OECD, 2018), and on to global citizenship across cognitive, social, and behavioural functions (UNESCO, 2019).

Seminal writings that have influenced the field have drawn on concepts of citizenship and society (Delors, 1996); on key competencies (OECD, 2001; Rychen & Salganik, 2003) including tools for interacting effectively, engaging with others, taking responsibility for managing self within the broader social context; and on ‘deeper learning’ (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). More recently, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; UNESCO, 2018) have made explicit not only the valuing of literacy and numeracy but also the need to equip citizens with technical and vocational skills, social and cognitive competencies, and the characteristics associated with global citizenship. The SDGs signal an emphasis on the breadth of skills necessary to prepare children, youth and adults comprehensively for twenty-first century citizenship and life.

There have been few efforts to identify classifications that are idiosyncratic to regions. Among these few are contributions from East Asia (Cheng, 2017) and South East Asia (UNESCO, 2015). In Africa, there have been few attempts to summarise frameworks of these competencies. One output of the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF, 2013) was identification of seven domains of learning, including the learning approaches and cognition domain, and the social and emotional domain. This was a global rather than regional enterprise but included a significant number of African countries. Another initiative that sought to map competencies being targeted by nine sub-Saharan countries that were members of TALENT, based in UNESCO, Dakar (Kim & Care, 2020), found core skills rather than common frameworks across their curricular goals – such as creativity, initiative, problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. This cluster of skills is similar to that found from a larger scale mapping of over 160 countries (Care & Kim, 2018).

1.1.2 Why These Competencies in the Curriculum?

As national education systems seek to broaden their curricula and teaching, these are responses to both global and local imperatives. The global we see reflected in much of the literature cited in the introductory sections of this chapter. The local imperatives can be seen reflected in individual country vision statements, which vary from responses to economic imperatives, citizenship, values, and religious concerns, and aspirations for development of the individual. Accordingly, the rationale for ‘skills’ prioritises responses to a changing world socio-economically, concerns about the attitudes and values of youth, discontent with current education provision and student learning, and awareness of environmental and sustainability issues.

Year by year increasing numbers of children attend formal education. As the sector becomes more inclusive, so it must be more adaptive in order to meet the learning needs of more diverse populations, and more diversified itself in order to meet the socio-economic needs of the state. However, the universalisation of education provision has not been accompanied by universalisation of expected outcomes. The existing concerns about slowness of progress toward the 2030 targets (UNESCO, 2018) have been exacerbated by the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which more than 190 countries implemented nationwide closures, hypothesised to exacerbate existing inequities and obstruct educational progress toward the SDG targets (UNESCO et al., 2021).

As the education sector has struggled to continue provision of teaching or teaching materials to youth over the past 3 years, planners trimmed down curriculum and developed materials specific to self-directed learning (e.g., Department of Education, 2020; UNESCO et al., 2021). At the same time, for those students who were able to access learning materials at all, their motivation and capacity to direct and manage their own learning bring the matter of self-direction, independence, and problem solving to the fore. We wait for more insights about the relevance of generic competencies for self-management of learning, particularly in low-income countries (Betthäuser et al., 2023).

In the face of continuing concerns about the directions and implementation of education provision world-wide, the visibility of curriculum reform stands as an acknowledgement of the need to broaden the nature of that provision. Such acknowledgements are an essential step which can stimulate wider discussion of new directions, and lead to further reforms in pedagogy and in assessment. As documented in the case of several countries in South East Asia (UNESCO, 2016; Care & Luo, 2016) curricular reform that incorporates generic competencies has typically not been accompanied by timely reform initiatives in teacher training, or in provision of aligned learning resources. This trend points to continued lack of acknowledgement of the need for systemic integration of the skills, requiring a major rethink of how teachers, particularly in the secondary sector, can incorporate the skills in their teaching—through modelling and through focus on process. As increasing numbers of countries and regions begin the journey towards more holistic concepts of education, these learnings have the power to inform more successful shifts in these countries.

1.2 ALiVE

Given the wealth of information now available from other countries which have embarked on the ‘21st century skills’ or generic competencies path, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda are well-placed to take an informed approach to policy and practice. Alert to these issues, the ALiVE initiative has taken a grounded approach to the informing of policy which will prioritise alignment across the major actors of an education provision system—curriculum, assessment, pedagogy, and learning resources.

The education systems across the three countries have each reviewed their curricula in the past 5 years, and have included what they variously refer to as ‘core competencies’ (Kenya: Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, 2019), ‘generic skills’ (Uganda: National Curriculum Development Centre, 2020), and ‘learning, life, and soft skills’ (Tanzania: Tanzania Institute of Education, 2019). The national perspectives and consultations within each country are reflected by the differences in how each conceptualises these competencies. For ALiVE, a key factor was to identify a common set of valued competencies across the three countries, in order to ensure that the information captured by the assessment tools would be relevant and useful. A high-level overview is provided in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2 Commonality of values and skills across the four educational jurisdictions
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Table 1.2 lists the values and life skills that are identified in the education systems’ curricular frameworks or visions. Each system typically also highlights key generic competencies which draw on the focus values and skills as well as others. There are some terminology differences across the countries, which are highlighted as relevant. There is no doubt that the countries are espousing similar sentiments in terms of their hopes for their youth. These similarities made possible the ALiVE aspirations for development of one common set of tools to use to capture a picture of young people’s competencies. This ‘picture’ would then provide evidence on current functioning levels to support system, school, and teacher identification of ‘zones of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1978) for instruction.

Notwithstanding the clarity of the countries’ aspirations, each remains in early days of implementing what amounts to a shift in educational policy from focus on academic knowledge and skills alone. There are several factors that typically impact on implementation (UNESCO, 2016; Care & Luo, 2016). These include:

  • Confusion about what the competencies actually are, which are valuable, how to conceptualise, how to integrate into practice, and how to evaluate outcomes (due to lack of knowledge of how to deconstruct to identify contributing subskills, integrate into classroom teaching);

  • A policy and then inputs focus on implementation (of which curricular integration is a visible sign) without review of the necessary infrastructure (teacher training, revised texts or teaching materials) (Benavot & Williams, 2023; UNESCO, 2021);

  • Lack of community understanding of the relevance and functionality of these competencies, and therefore lack of community voice to stimulate action.

1.2.1 Contextualisation

A major dissonance exists in the formal education environment and individuals’ daily lives. Arguably, this dissonance is to blame for communities’ lack of understanding of this particular education shift. In many countries, the primary identity of education lies in its provision of foundational skills in literacy and numeracy; and secondarily in its role in equipping those who are fortunate by birth or their intrinsic qualities, to prosper beyond the reach of the majority.

Demonstrating the relevance of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values in daily life has been the path taken by ALiVE. To use the experiences of young people from one day to the next as the vehicle for demonstration of life skills and values, has been the strategy to link the two worlds, and to elicit information from one world to inform the other. This strategy has been made possible through the initiative’s focus on contextualisation—what makes sense to the individual and community through common perspectives on social, religious and cultural life and manners. In effect, contextualisation is about ensuring authenticity of concept and of practice.

ALiVE has based the assembling of evidence to inform policy on ‘contextualisation’ (e.g., Giacomazzi, 2022) through exploring local understandings of socially defined characteristics and competencies (see Giacomazzi, 2024; Chap. 3, this volume). In turn, contextual understandings have informed the development of assessment tools, drawing on ‘authenticity’ perspectives (e.g., Care & Kim, 2018) from the field of assessment. The two concepts—contextualisation and authenticity—are complementary elements in ALiVE. Contextualisation provides the means to ensure that target conceptualisations of human characteristics and capabilities are meaningful to the participating populations, while striving for authenticity in development of situation-based and performance-based tasks provides a realistic environment in which to demonstrate proficiencies. So, the target life skills and values are contextualised, and the measures of these are developed from ‘authentic’ daily life (see this volume: Scoular & Otieno, 2024; Ngina et al., 2024; Care & Giacomazzi, 2024).

1.2.2 Assessment

Assessment is a much-maligned notion, often deservedly so. It can be used to limit opportunities rather than open doors. However, it has two benefits that cannot be under-estimated. Both of these benefit stem from the same characteristic—assessment provides information. That information can be used at medium to large scale level to guide education providers concerning what has been achieved or what is wanting. The information can also be used at individual and group level to guide learning, primarily through the methods popularised by Black and Wiliam (1998) as formative assessment. The benefits can only be realised where those responsible for the assessment are clear on the purpose of the assessment, the target characteristic or competency of that assessment, and the target individual, group, or population for that assessment. This simple concept is challenged in implementation. A particular challenge, encountered and welcomed by ALiVE, is that of being clear on the target characteristic or competency to be assessed, and how those characteristics or competencies will be expressed and recognised in the target populations.

1.2.3 Assessment and Its Authenticity

A primary convention adopted by psychometricians and by users of assessments, is that the assessment must clearly target the construct of interest (whether capabilities, knowledge, characteristics), and will target this in a way that will be familiar to the individual being assessed. These are two forms of alignment. For example, if one wants to find out if a child can add two numbers less than 10, then a task can be set that will require exactly that type of calculation—this is the first alignment, that what is assessed is an indicator of the targeted construct. If a child has been familiarised with the concept of addition of two numbers less than 10 through the use of manipulable objects, then the task can be provided in that mode—whether physically or in an online environment. If the child has been familiarised with the concept via the use of symbols, and/or use of pen and paper, this mode can be used—this is the second alignment, that how one is assessed is consistent with the manner in which one has learnt. Of course, the alignment is not always as clear as in this example, particularly as the target construct becomes more complex, and draws on several subskills or other contributing factors.

Given this history, the assessment of ‘21st century skills’ is an interesting phenomenon. Often referred to as ‘difficult to measure’ capabilities, there is little doubt that these skills fall into the category of being complex, and drawing on multiple competencies. This may account to some degree for the ‘difficult to measure’ perception. Besides this of course, is that these competencies have not been included extensively in curriculum, in teaching, and therefore in assessment. Since there may be few examples of how such skills are integrated into daily classroom practice, their lack of visibility does not provide a recognisable way of assessing them.

Much of the focus on generic competencies has been around their use in daily life and in work, and their hoped-for role in helping societies to identify a better world future. These—daily life, work life, and problem solving—are the ‘authentic’ playing fields for the skills, and many of the ways in which it is presumed they will be demonstrated, is through performance in situ—as distinct from stating what one has learnt as often the case in the education environment. In this distinction lies the assessment approach adopted by ALiVE, to elicit likely reactions to scenarios rather than for adolescents to self-rate or evaluate themselves (see Nansubuga et al., 2024; Chap. 7, this volume).

The five dimensions for authentic assessment proposed by Gulikers et al. (2004) provide a useful framework through which to combine authenticity demands of contextualisation and those of assessment.

The first concerns the assessment task. An authentic assessment is one that requires application of what an individual has learned to a new instance of a familiar situation or issue; it should be realistic, and requires some performance on the part of the respondent (Wiggins, 1998). The medium therefore provides for the demonstration of proficiencies directly rather than providing self-referenced estimates of one’s abilities, or merely providing knowledge-based perspectives on an issue. The assessment requires transfer of learning, a characteristic synonymous with the ambitions associated with the learning and development of generic competencies. This notion of authentic assessment is removed from the narrower view of authentic assessment by teachers which is focussed on including multiple forms of assessment in the classroom. For example, the use of varied assessment forms described by Darling-Hammond and Snyder (2000)—portfolio, exhibitions, case reports, and problem-based inquiry—does not engage directly with authenticity of assessment and its alignment with contextualised understandings of the target behaviours or competencies. This approach acknowledges the different backgrounds of students, but ‘solves’ the issue by recommending delivery flexibility, as opposed to looking more deeply at the underpinnings of curriculum and contextualised meaning of concepts. The remaining dimensions are all key into the matter of contextualisation. These include the physical context, the social, the assessment result or form, and the criteria for evaluating assessment performance.

A precursor to the assessment event itself is the matter of ensuring that the target competency is understood within its ‘activation space’. In other words, the assessment event cannot be authentic if the target competency itself is not contextual. Accordingly, the physical and social context of the assessment is not unique to the event, but is a necessary component of the original contextualisation process. With this matter checked, then the next significant question for ALiVE concerned the authenticity of the assessment event. Authenticity in assessment is not guaranteed by the contextualisation process; also, to be considered is the assessment act, or event, itself, and how this is experienced by the adolescent respondent. Strongly linked with the assessment and its form is how an individual’s responses are evaluated.

1.2.4 The Vexed Matter of Validity

Does a measure provide information that is true to a competence of interest? The whole process of contextualisation, to ensure that the ‘labels’ for the life skills and values represent shared understandings of these; the technical process of developing assessment tools that are true to the competence, and true to the context; do these ensure that the data gathered are a true representation of the adolescents’ skills and values?

ALiVE engaged in a large-scale household-based assessment program, querying adolescents about their reactions and responses to daily life issues. How frequently have teams of adults come to urban as well as far-flung communities to engage one to one with young people. What are their likely thoughts or interpretations of the event itself? How might these have influenced their responses?

For the majority of adolescents, their only experience of adults asking a series of questions and noting down their responses, has been in the formality of a classroom, or for employment purposes. And that formality has been associated with the knowledge of the adolescent that they would pass or fail, do well or do badly, be selected or not. That formality has also been associated with expectations about the dynamics of oral interactions with adults. The ALiVE assessment process was one in which adolescents were invited to answer in a conversation style, to engage in the interaction in the informal environment of the home, to provide their opinions and likely reactions—a very different adolescent-adult interaction than likely experienced previously.

The impact of the possibility that the interaction might have been experienced with discomfort or awkwardness, is not known. What is known, is that all adolescents were approached in the same way, with the same instructions, and the same positive affect. To this degree, therefore, the results across the adolescents can be seen as comparable. Whether those results are under-estimates, however, is not something that can be known in these early days of the assessments of life skills and values. It is possible that specific community environments could differentially influence adolescent response modes and quality of those responses.

How these results might translate into performance that draws on the same competencies, but in a formal school environment, using curricular-based content, is another unknown. The promise of the outcomes of ALiVE is that the competencies can be measured, and that is an indicator of immense value for the education systems in which these adolescents engage.

1.3 The Narrative

The following chapters provide the narrative that threads the ALiVE learning, progress, activities, and outputs. The chapters are written by those who have been part of the years long processes from contextualisation studies through to reporting results in national and global forums. Shariff et al. (2024) provide a more detailed description of ALiVE, explaining its motivating force in terms of labour force and educational needs. The chapter details how the activities that comprise the initiative moved from engaging a large technical team through to the assessment of over 45,000 adolescents in the participating countries. Moving on from the over-arching view, Giacomazzi (2024) sets the contextualisation stage upon which ALiVE sits, describing the pivotal issue of ensuring that what is being aspired to is relevant and understood in the moment and in the place. He describes how ALiVE set about the process of understanding the life skills and values in the forms that they are appreciated by the main stakeholders in ALiVE – the parents, the children, the educators. With the first three chapters having established perspectives on the target competencies, the shape of the initiative, and the focus on contextualisation, the next three chapters take us to targets of the assessment, the skill of problem solving (Care & Giacomazzi, 2024), the skill of self-awareness and value of respect (Ngina et al., 2024), and the skill of collaboration (Scoular & Otieno, 2024). Each of these skills and value chapters provide details of the conceptual structures and assessment frameworks of the constructs, drawing attention to different characteristics of these across global literature and measurement within ALiVE. Some of these characteristics are then illustrated by drawing on the ALiVE tool, and describing the approaches taken to task development for the final survey. Distinctive features of ALiVE’s approach to assessment are discussed in the next three chapters. First, Nansubuga et al. (2024) highlight approaches adopted in sub-Saharan Africa for the measurement of ‘21st century skills’ in order to paint a picture of mainstream approaches to measurement of these skills. Next, Nakabugo et al. (2024) draw attention to the household-based mode of assessment used in the program. This and the following chapter by Mutweleli et al. (2024) draw attention to the ground-breaking nature of this assessment enterprise. Both the measurement of these generic competencies and use of household-based approaches to assessment are relatively recent in their own right. Combining these two initiatives provides a proof of concept illustrating the viability both of capturing the skills and doing so in environments not dependent on manipulables or technologies. Muteleli and colleagues describe how and why a scenario-based approach to assessment was used for three of the target constructs – problem solving, respect and self-awareness. Having established the context, the constructs, and the methods, the narrative shifts to outcomes and to reflection. Ariapa et al. (2024) provide the technical details behind the methods of test and scale development used, and describe the proficiencies of adolescents across Kenya, Tanzania mainland, Uganda, and Zanzibar in practical terms—what the adolescents can do. They describe the way that tasks and their items were tagged to the constructs, give details about the psychometric qualities of the tool, and provide survey level results that present the proficiency levels of the adolescents. The final two chapters turn to organisation and aspiration. Turner et al. (2024) draw the portrait of the collaborative endeavour across the three countries, their networks and organisations, and individuals, to seek understanding of how this multi-faceted technical project survived and thrived. And Mugo (2024) takes the narrative back to its beginning, focussed on global and local policies and the strategic impact of education shifts for Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. He explores the systemic issues associated with use of evidence to inform policy, reflects on ALiVE’s path, and draws five implications for policy and practice.

1.4 Conclusion

The goal of ALiVE is to inform the education visions of the three participating countries, by providing evidence of adolescents’ current functional levels associated with life skills and values valued by their education systems. This goal represents the understanding that the intentions of education systems and their consequent inputs are insufficient to bring about change. Additional evidence, in the form of achievement data gathered from the concerned adolescent population, must be brought to bear in order to identify exactly what the current functioning of those adolescents is. This information then provides a road map to develop that functioning. The following chapters describe a technical achievement. The achievement lies in two phenomena. The first is the development of an assessment tool to measure selected life skills and value, which when administered at large-scale household level, generates robust evidence of how a representative sample of young Africans see themselves and others, how they can solve problems and collaborate. The second is the collaboration across a large group of individuals and organisations primarily from non-government sector but with commitment from government and academia, to engage in learning by doing.