This report discusses Jordan's remedial pilot research program which was designed to assist teachers in improving the performance of those children who had fallen behind the general performance level of the rest of the class. The program focused on Arabic reading and mathematics in grades 1, 2, and 3. The rationale of the program is that children who are not performing at the general level of the class can benefit from additional instructional support that is aimed at their individual level of learning.

This report discusses the impact and results of the pilot intervention that was implemented during the 2013-2014 school year across 43 schools reaching more than 400 teachers and approximately 12,000 students in Jordan.

A year after the first baseline EGRA was completed in four language regions, a follow-up survey was administered to samples of 30 to 40 teachers and 375 to 400 students per grade in the same regions (randomly sampled). The sampled teachers were asked about their preparation for, level of comfort with, and understanding of MTB-MLE, and their instructional practice during a reading lesson was observed. Timed observation instruments provided an opportunity to analyze time on task, and the relationship to reading achievement. Students completed an assessment of their letter sound knowledge, decoding skills, oral reading fluency, and reading comprehension in their mother tongue, and their listening comprehension and ability to read familiar words in Filipino, as well as their oral understanding of common English vocabulary words and phrases.

Following the study completed in 2013, measuring English, Filipino and Ilokano reading skills, this 2014 EGRA study is serves as a baseline for monitoring the government's Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) program by conducting EGRA assessments in four mother-tongue languages—Cebuano (Sinugbuanong Binisaya), Hiligaynon, Ilokano and Maguindanaoan. The survey also included classroom observations of teaching practice and teacher interviews to gather contextual information about the extent of MTB-MLE implementation.

The present report describes the results of two reading assessments that were carried out to measure performance of a representative national sample of children reading English and Filipino at the end of grade 3 (Objective 1, above) and a regional sample of children reading Ilokano in grade 1 (Objective 2, above). The first included a national sample of 2,463 students, selected in a stratified, random framework to be representative of six geographic areas: North Luzon, Metro Manila, South Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The second was a regional sample of 494 children in 50 schools selected randomly in Region 1 from all schools who reported having begun implementation of Ilokano instruction in school year 2012–2013 or 2011–2012.