October 2023​

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This study aims to estimate the potential learning setbacks resulting from COVID-19-induced school closures in Türkiye. It introduces a methodology designed to assess the varying impact of these closures on learning outcomes using existing pre-pandemic learning data. Using PISA 2018 dataset, we simulate post-closure learning outcomes for 15-year-olds while factoring in the diverse home learning environments of children. Within the Turkish context, our simulations reveal that more significant learning losses are likely to have affected students with lower initial scores, those residing in smaller cities or villages, and those attending specific school types. Importantly, this methodology for simulating learning losses exhibits potential applicability to 79 countries with accessible PISA datasets. It holds promise as a valuable tool for estimating learning losses during potential future school closures or lockdowns.

September 2023​

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The home learning environment of children became critical during the COVID-19 school closures, and already-existing deprivations of children increased inequalities in access to education during the COVID crisis. This study documents the home learning environment for the Turkish host community and Syrian refugee children in the pre-pandemic year. In order to achieve this end, a composite home learning environment (HLEQI) is calculated using the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) in Türkiye, which includes a sample of Syrian children. This study reveals that Syrian children were already burdened with disadvantages regarding their home learning environment quality, with the average HLEQI calculated for Turkish children as 61.7% and Syrian children at 36.5%. Moreover, when examining the individual components of this composite index, our study reveals substantial gaps in the supportive home learning environment for both Turkish and Syrian children, with the latter facing even greater challenges. These gaps span across various dimensions of the composite index, encompassing aspects such as access to remote learning infrastructure, adequate study space at home, and quality interaction with adults. The study underscores the need for targeted interventions to address these disparities and ensure an equitable learning environment for all children, regardless of their background or circumstances.

May 2023​

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The report, "Documentation of Education Response in Türkiye during the Covid-19 Pandemic and its Effect on Children's Access to and Retention in Education", prepared for UNICEF Türkiye, presents a comprehensive examination of the education landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic in Türkiye, drawing on a range of data sources and utilizing a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. It provides valuable insights into the challenges faced by various stakeholders, learning losses experienced by children, risk factors for school dropouts, socioeconomic influences on school attendance, barriers to education access, implemented policies and programs, and recommendations for further policy development, implementation, and programming.

May 2023​

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Development Analytics has designed the Interactive Social Policy Simulator (ISPS) to allow policy-makers to effectively design and expand social protection. Without writing a single line of code, ISPS empowers policy-makers to design more cost-effective policies in several domains, including cash transfer targeting, service provision, and predictive modelling for early-warning systems.

March 2023​

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Expanding access to quality and affordable child care offers to be a beneficial investment for countries as it helps improving children’s foundational skills while also enhancing women’s empowerment through enabling women to participate in the labour force. Over the last decade, Development Analytics has carried out several studies looking specifically at childcare policies and programmes and their ability to improve the overall well-being of children and their families. These studies were carried out for partners and clients including the World Bank, UNICEF, AfD, Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work (KEDV) and The Mother-Child Education Foundation (AÇEV). 

February 2023​

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As the Development Analytics Team, we are deeply saddened by the devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria last week. The scale of the tragedy and the size of the area covered is huge and in terms of the estimated death toll reaches 200,000 - though official figures at the moment are a fraction of this level. The population affected by the earthquake has immediate shelter and food needs. Turkey Mozaik Foundation works with local NGOs in the field to provide this support. 

January 2023​

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Dropping out of school is often not a sudden action but a culmination of various factors pushing children to leave school. For this reason, it is very important to pre-emptively identify students at risk and take preventive measures to improve school retention rates over time. Especially in modelling early warning systems, machine learning has recently proved to be a promising approach to identifying students at risk of dropout and informing preventive policy interventions for education staff and policymakers. However, the current focus on using administrative data with ML applications also restricts the scope of these applications in data-scarce countries, where data collection and management systems are relatively more prone to financial and technical constraints.

September 2022

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The report, “Evaluative Learning Study for Phase III of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) Assistance for Refugees in Turkey”, prepared by Development Analytics for The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), documents the livelihoods and vulnerabilities of refugees in Turkey and focuses on the period between October 2018 and December 2021.

August 2022

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Development Analytics studied the feasibility of using digital ID and alternative data sources to support the financial inclusion of refugees in Turkey through a project financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The project "Exploring the Use of Digital ID and Big Data for the Financial Inclusion of Refugees in Istanbul" aimed to raise awareness of the key stakeholders among Turkish authorities and financial institutions to incite action that enhances Turkey's refugee response to financial inclusion, examined their approaches and provided alternative digital identity solutions to overcome challenges with the support of frontier technologies. 

July 2022

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Development Analytics has recently entered a Long-Term Arrangement (LTAS) with UNICEF on the Provision of High-Quality Technical Expertise on Child Poverty and Social Protection. Under this LTA, we stand ready to support UNICEF Country Offices in the period 2022-2025 on analytical work related to Integrated Programme Areas and Inclusive Social Protection.

March 2022

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Our article “Cash transfers: learning from the EU programme in Turkey”, distilling Development Analytics’ learnings from the projects carried out since 2017 related to the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) cash transfer in Turkey, is published in the Forced Migration Review (FMR). Published by the Refugee Studies Centre in the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, FMR is the most widely read publication on forced migration globally. In recent years, in Turkey, Development Analytics has taken key roles in several programme evaluations related to the ESSN: the mid-term evaluation of the Facility for Refugees in Turkey (the Facility/FRIT) (2019-2021), mid-term evaluation of the ESSN transfer (2017-2018) and mid-term review of the ESSN transfer (2019-2020). Our work in this context resumed this year as well through two different research studies carried out for The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) and related to ESSN Phase III.

September  2021

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Our associate Didem Pekkurnaz, and the Development Analytics team members Meltem A. Aran and Nazli Aktakke have published an article entitled "Does quality matter in determining child care prices? Evidence from private child care provision in Turkey". The paper was published in the International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy in September 2021.

July 2021

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Development Analytics has recently concluded three microsimulation projects to allow decision-makers to forecast the possible outcomes of various policy scenarios to alleviate the negative impact of the COVID pandemic. In this capacity, our team worked with a number of UNICEF country offices, including Georgia, St Lucia, and Turkey, to estimate the pandemic’s impact on the monetary poverty of children and possible poverty reducing impact of alternative cash transfer scenarios. Development Analytics provided UNICEF country offices with interactive dashboards as well, that makes it easier to see the results in a dynamic way and increases the usefulness and effectiveness of the research for government counterparts.