The USAID Opportunities for Equitable Access to Quality Basic Education (OPEQ) activity was a school-based intervention implemented by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in partnership with the DRC’s Ministry of Education and focusing on early grade reading and math skills. The IRC integrated into OPEQ its social-emotional skills building curriculum which has resulted from the IRC’s education research and experience in conflict and crisis-affected areas. The OPEQ activity had four components: (1) informing national level in-service teacher-training policy and systems, (2) community mobilization and engagement, (3) alternative education and vocational training for out-of-school youth, and (4) Learning in a Healing Classroom (LHC), an in-service teacher professional development and integrated curricular program.

The impact evaluation of OPEQ’s LHC activity employed a 3-year cluster-randomized trial, measuring the impact of LHC in treatment schools to wait-list control schools. The intervention was assigned to two cohorts defined by geographic location and timing of implementation. The Katanga 4 cohort had schools that received one year and two years of LHC located in Katanga province. The Kivu+ cohort had schools that received one year of the LHC intervention located in South Kivu and some parts of Katanga province. At each school in the sample, field researchers surveyed 81 students randomly selected from the student enrollment register. For the baseline and midline phases, students in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were tested. For the endline phase, students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades were tested.