The US Agency for International Development (USAID) Early Grade Reading (EGR) Project in the West Bank completed its first year successfully with the completion of assessments and surveys, curriculum and standards reviews, and instructional materials in preparation for Year 2 implementation in schools. EGR worked closely with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE) to ensure their partnership in project activities. EGR administered two important assessments: a Time on Task (TOT) study, which determined the amount of time classroom teachers spent on reading and writing instruction, and the project baseline assessment, which provided a snapshot of the strengths and weaknesses of the students in the EGR-supported schools. The team also conducted a comprehensive review of the MOEHE’s standards and curricular documents related to early grade reading and writing to inform the development of the training materials and the complementary reading materials. By the end of the first year, EGR had established to support the MOEHE to implement a high-quality reading and writing program in 104 EGR-supported primary schools.

In partnership with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE), RTI International administered a baseline assessment of early grade reading skills in April and May 2018. The goal of the baseline assessment was to provide the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) West Bank Early Grade Reading (EGR) activity with a deeper understanding of the pre-literacy, reading, and writing abilities of kindergarten (KG), grade 1 (G1), and grade 2 (G2) students in the formal language of primary school instruction, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The baseline assessment also established the values of program performance indicators before the implementation of the EGR intervention, which will subsequently be compared to future values collected at midline and endline timepoints to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The baseline assessment was conducted with 293 KG students, 1,492 G1 students, and 1,465 G2 students randomly selected and equally divided between girls and boys. The assessment measured the students’ pre-literacy and early grade reading ability and writing skills, including letter sound knowledge, word recognition, oral reading fluency (ORF), listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing.

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE) conducted the first EGRA assessment in the West Bank in March 2014 among a nationally representative sample of Grade 2 students, followed by a benchmarking exercise in September 2014. In 2018, the Early Grade Reading (EGR) project conducted a project baseline using an adapted EGRA 1 and MELQO 2 3 . Following this assessment, the MOEHE expressed interest in revising the 2014 provisional Grade 2 benchmarks and developing Grade 1 benchmarks. EGR conducted a technical benchmarking workshop in November 2018.

The purpose of this formative assessment is to contribute to the community outreach component of the EGR program by collecting and analysing information about target audiences, specifically their knowledge, attitudes and behavior. This information will contribute to the design of messages, techniques and tools that will resonate with the target audience. The assessment has collected information and identified current parent and family practices, explored the behaviors of reading in homes and communities in terms of resources available and activities organized, and engaged the targeted group in different aspects of the assessment to develop the correct recommendations enabling EGR to define and implement realistic and concrete community outreach activities.

This report presents the results of a baseline assessment of upper preschool and grade 1 student performance in pre-literacy and early grade reading. The assessment included samples drawn from three provinces in Cambodia: Kampong Thom, Siem Reap, and Battambang (control). The results will serve as a baseline for comparing the impact of early grade reading interventions being implemented in Kampong Thom and Siem Reap. The data reveal lower than expected levels of oral language ability among students in upper pre-school, especially given that Khmer is the mother tongue for nearly all students in the areas covered. For example, students responded correctly to only 3 out of 5 questions concerning a short passage that had been read to them. And in terms of their pre-literacy skills, when shown the letters they were supposed to learn in upper pre-school, students identified them with only 28% accuracy. Performance of grade 1 students on early literacy skills was also much lower than should be expected for the period during which the test was administered. For example, grade 1 students who were almost three-quarters of the way through the school year could only correctly identify letters 34% of the time and were identifying fewer than 10 letters per minute. When simpler forms of consonants and vowels were tested separately, grade 1 students performed better, but still correctly identified letters with less than 50% accuracy. Reading of familiar words in isolation or reading of a short grade-level passage were essentially non-existent.

Do children with deficits in both rapid automatic naming (RAN) and phonological awareness in Chichewa experience more difficulty with reading growth than children with single or no deficits? To answer this question, we developed a RAN measure of common objects and a phonological awareness measure and administered them four times during a school year. Students who scored poorly on one of these measures as compared to their peers were classified as having a deficit. A compelling finding was Single Deficit and Double Deficit groups have similar average scores at Time 1; by Time 3 and Time 4, the Single Deficit group pulls away, more than doubling the average score of Double Deficit counterparts at Time 4. This study presents a tool to help to identify children at risk for reading difficulties. Children with a Double Deficit profile may need differentiated instruction.

Indonesia 2014: The National Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and Snapshot of School Management Effectiveness (SSME) Survey Instruments

This brief presents Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data from a randomized control trial conducted in conjunction with the USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program (SHRP). SHRP supports reading in 3,700 government schools working through the systems that support these schools and was the catalyst for reform efforts which now cover 80% of Uganda's government primary schools. The assessment collected baseline data at the beginning of Primary 1 for 12 language cohorts and follow up at the end of every school year. These data collected in October, 2017 track progress at the school level (and differences between program and control schools) until the end of Primary 4, Primary 5 or Primary 6 (depending on the year the language was phased into the program). Learning for Uganda and beyond • Registering significant programmatic gains in reading achievement takes time. In the case of Uganda, this is partially attributable to the low baseline levels of reading (94% of learners across the 12 languages could read no words in English at the beginning of P1) and other systemic challenges within Ugandan schools not uncommon in other settings including teacher and learner absenteeism. • When learners learn to read in a local language, the gains realized in the local language are transferred to learning to read in English Major messages - When children learn to read (decode) in their local language, they are able to transfer this skill to decoding English. However, more work needs to be done to improve English comprehension. - Although SHRP has been able to move more learners to higher reading levels and they are on their way to becoming fluent readers, there are still too many learners not acquiring foundation skills. - It takes more time to move children from the foundation threshold than anticipated but when you move them from that level, the gains take off as can be seen from P3 onwards. - Reading gains in large scale interventions working through government structures take time due to systemic and contextual challenges.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. This paper examines the influence of Mother Tongue (MT) as a medium of instruction in lower primary schools in 4 zones of Machakos County based on the PRIMR program. The relationship between MT implementation at the classroom level and its impact on pupil’s literacy outcomes are explored.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. The Tusome national literacy program has been implemented in each of Kenya’s more than 22,000 public primary schools and 1500 low cost private schools in the slums since 2015. In addition to showing the comparisons between before and after Tusome’s implementation, this presentation will examine Tusome implementation data to reveal key characteristics of the scale-up framework that Tusome was designed to respond to. In particular, we share the extent of classroom utilization of the Tusome materials, the size of the classroom observational structures that Tusome tried to revitalize, and the responses of the community to the Tusome intervention. The findings suggest that Tusome had a substantial impact on literacy outcomes in both Kiswahili and English, in both Grade 1 and 2, in both public and low cost private settings, and in both urban and rural settings. This means that the program’s effect meant that nearly 1 million more children were able to be considered readers by the midterm intervention.