Intervention assignment and selection of schools for close monitoring
During the preparatory visit, the study team met with local Council Health Management Team (CHMT) members in each council. In these meetings, randomization was conducted following a brief yet comprehensive explanation of the planned study. This explanation was critical to ensure the whole randomization process transparent to the local government officials. The list of wards in each council was entered into an Excel sheet from which a randomization code was made. The first half of selected wards were assigned to the IPTsc arm, while the remaining were assigned to the control arm. Again, in each study arm, half of the wards were randomly selected for effectiveness assessment; only one school was selected after randomization of the schools in the respective ward. Here, randomization was done by mixing small folded papers with one school’s name on each piece. One of the CHMT members was then given an opportunity to pick any one of the mixed papers and read aloud the name of the school written on it. At this level, schools that were located in hard-to-reach areas were excluded from randomization following advice from the local authorities regarding convenience and logistics.