We are often more certain than the evidence really allows.
More quotesA national group begins drafting a plan to “fix education”.
In one community, attendance is already better under similar constraints.
A coordinator there uses a shared timetable and sends two messages before each session. She also knows which families never receive the first message.
The national group requests her method.
A second site copies the timetable and both messages. Attendance barely changes.
Interviews find that families there change phone numbers frequently. The messages are being sent correctly to dead contacts.
The second site adds a simple way to update numbers. Attendance improves slightly.
A third site has current numbers and weak attendance. Sessions clash with a local shift pattern.
The schedule changes. Attendance moves for one group and falls for another.
By the fourth site, “the intervention” contains a timetable, contact maintenance, timing decisions and one person who notices exceptions before they become statistics.
The national plan still calls it a messaging programme because messaging is the visible object that travelled.
Megan Smith’s phrase “scout and scale” sounds modest beside invention from headquarters. The modesty is deceptive. Finding where outcomes differ, identifying what people actually do, separating mechanism from local support and adapting it elsewhere is harder than copying a template.
The next version of the plan contains four rows: setting, difference, adaptation, result.
The next review date is 18 June.