This circular from the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) describes a new mandatory requirement under the "National Strategy and Action Plan on Violence Against Children in Schools (VACiS), the Reporting, Tracking, Referral and Response (RTRR) Guidelines on Violence Against Children in Schools, and the Alternative to Corporal Punishment Guidelines" to use the Journey's handbooks developed by RTI under the USAID/LARA program in primary schools. The circular makes recommendations for including a range of education sector stakeholders in ensuring sufficient time spent using the materials.

Article published in the IJEDICT, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2017). Published Abstract: "Previous large-scale education technology interventions have shown only modest impacts on student achievement. Building on results from an earlier randomized controlled trial of three different applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on primary education in Kenya, the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity developed the National Tablets Program. The National Tablets Program is integrated into the Tusome activity by providing tablets to each of more than 1,200 instructional coaches in the country to use when they visit teachers. This enables a national database of classroom instructional quality, which is used by the education system to monitor overall education quality. The tools provided on the tablets are designed to help coaches increase the quality of their instructional support to teachers, and deepen the shallow accountability structures in Kenya’s education system. Using results of a national survey, we investigated the ability of the National Tablets Program to increase the number of classroom observations done by coaches and to improve student learning outcomes. Survey results showed high levels of tablet program utilization, increased accountability, and improvements in learning outcomes. We share recommendations regarding large-scale ICT interventions and literacy programs.

During 2016/2017, RTI implemented an assistive technology initiative to improve reading instruction in inclusive grade two public school classrooms in 63 schools in five regions of Ethiopia. Project inputs included a smartphone with screening tools for vision and hearing impairment and explicitly accommodated reading lesson plans for reading and writing instruction in mother tongue. The intervention also included a total of 4 days of teacher training and two classroom monitoring visits per teacher. After three months of implementation, teacher attitudes and self-efficacy to inclusive education improved significantly, as did teacher adoption of foundational inclusive practices in the classroom. At the student level, students identified for a potential vision or hearing impairment in intervention classrooms demonstrated similar learning progress compared to their peers without such impairment, although the study found measurable differences in reading achievement between these groups already at baseline. In conclusion, the innovation of using pedagogical support tools on smartphones as assistive technology at the teacher level appeared to have been appropriate for the context of the participating schools in Ethiopia, as well as effective in improving inclusive reading instruction.

The USAID PRIORITAS project began in May 2012 with the aim of achieving expanded access to improved quality basic education (IR1). The intermediate results (IRs) that the project aimed to achieve are as follows: * strengthened instruction in schools in targeted districts (IR1-1) * improved education management and governance in targeted schools (IR1-2) * strengthened coordination between all levels of the Government of Indonesia (GOI) and education institutions (IR1-3). This report covers the duration of the project, from May 2012 to September 2017.

RTI International has been honored with a 2018 Digital Edge 50 Award for being a leader in digital innovation. The prestigious award recognizes a new open-source tool recently developed by RTI to measure executive function (EF) skills in pre-school aged children The tool, EF Touch, is administered using Tangerine®, RTI’s open source software that was designed to transform the way teachers, coaches and researchers assess and observe literacy and numeracy teaching and learning.

Success story about a recent kindergarten initiative under USAID's Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Project to help children and parents prepare to enter school.

Limited rigorous evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa regarding whether children who learn to read in their mother tongue will have higher learning outcomes in other subjects. A randomised controlled trial of mother-tongue literacy instruction, the Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) Initiative, was implemented in Kenya from 2013 to 2014. We compared the impacts of the PRIMR mother-tongue treatment group in two languages with those of another group that did not use mother tongue, but utilised the same instructional components. Results showed that assignment to the mother-tongue group had no additional benefits for English or Kiswahili learning outcomes beyond the non-mother-tongue group, and that the mother-tongue group had somewhat lower mathematics outcomes. Classroom observational analysis showed that assignment to the mother-tongue group had only small impacts on the usage of mother tongue in other subjects. Advocates for mother-tongue programmes must consider such results alongside local implementation resistance in programme design.

This presentation was delivered by Wendi Ralaingita at the Open Learning Exchange (OLE) conference in Kathmandu, Nepal (November 2017). It provides an overview of RTI's evidence-based approach to ICT integration, based largely on the Improvement Science literature, particularly Edward Deming. Describes uses of Tangerine open-source software for teacher coaching (Tangerine:Tutor) and classroom continuous assessment (Tangerine:Class) as well as hearing and vision screening tools integrated with EGRA and EGMA assessments.

This is a presentation about Tangerine:Class, which was delivered at the 2016 Pacific Circle Consortium in Saipan.

Cambodia’s teacher professional development (PD) system is at a crossroads. There is a growing realization that the lower than expected learning outcomes in Cambodia are directly related to lower than desirable classroom teaching. To respond to this reality, Cambodia aims to put in place improved systems for pre-service teacher preparation (moving to a 12+4 system and introducing a new Bachelor of Arts in Education (BA [Ed.]) degree, intensive upgrading of existing teachers, and continuous professional development and mentoring. A working group organized by the Teacher Training Department is bringing together stakeholders to assist in the design and implementation of an improved in-service training (INSET) system. The present document aims to bring together pertinent information and evidence on effective continuous professional development (CPD) to support the work of this group.