In 2010, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the Malawi Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST), developed a project to improve primary education and implementation of the National Primary Curriculum. The Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support (MTPDS) project, as it is known, included five major results areas related to improving teaching policy, teacher performance, early grade literacy, primary teaching and learning materials, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems. While many of the inputs designed to support these objectives took place on a national scale, a specific reading improvement program was designed and delivered in two districts in order to determine its effectiveness on a small scale. This report describes the impact of the intervention, evaluated based on a rigorous three-year randomized control trial (RCT) design.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support (MTPDS) project is a three-year activity supporting the professional development of teachers in Malawi and implementation of the National Primary Curriculum (NPC) with the goal of improving early grade reading and performance of learners. This report presents the results from a nationally representative study of primary school learners’ early grade reading skills in the Chichewa language, undertaken near the beginning of the school year, in November 2012. It is the third in a series of national samples designed to identify overall skills and gaps in order to inform national-level policies and strategies and determine the influence of policies and projects to address reading over time.