The United States Agency for International Development, the Department for International Development and the government of Malawi, through the MoEST, are collaborating to implement a National Reading Programme (NRP). This reading programme aims to improve early grade learners' literacy skills. Central to achieving this goal is building teachers' capacity to teach foundational reading skills that are key for successful reading and comprehension abilities needed for learning content across the curriculum. The NRP introduces teachers to effective reading instruction through the five essential components of Phonological Awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The NRP also includes oral language development and writing as part of reading instruction. The NRP aims to provide teachers and head teachers with training in how to better teach children in the early primary grades to read and write in Chichewa and English. The NRP focuses on strengthening teachers' skills and knowledge of how to teach literacy by providing them with opportunities for training and ongoing professional development through coaching.

The United States Agency for International Development, the Department for International Development and the government of Malawi, through the MoEST, are collaborating to implement a National Reading Programme (NRP). This reading programme aims to improve early grade learners' literacy skills. Central to achieving this goal is building teachers' capacity to teach foundational reading skills that are key for successful reading and comprehension abilities needed for learning content across the curriculum. The NRP introduces teachers to effective reading instruction through the five essential components of Phonological Awareness, alphabetic principle, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The NRP also includes oral language development and writing as part of reading instruction. The NRP aims to provide teachers and head teachers with training in how to better teach children in the early primary grades to read and write in Chichewa and English. The NRP focuses on strengthening teachers' skills and knowledge of how to teach literacy by providing them with opportunities for training and ongoing professional development through coaching.

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.

This article in The Economist cites RTI researcher Benjamin Piper, and an article he co-authored with RTI colleague Timothy Slade on summer learning loss in Malawi. "Benjamin Piper, of RTI International, an American research institute, suspects that the scale of summer learning loss may be worse in the developing world, where it has largely gone unnoticed and unstudied. In rural areas in particular, reading material can be hard to come by and some children still spend their holidays helping their families in the fields. A study Mr Piper co-authored in 2017, on Malawian children taking part in an American-funded literacy programme, may be the only one on summer learning loss in sub-Saharan Africa. It found that the loss was almost as big as the gains the literacy programme generated during the school year. Mr Piper says that international donors, who spent $1.4bn on basic education aid in Africa in 2015, risk “losing what they invested”."

This report presents the results of RTI International Education’s study on teachers' guides across 13 countries and 19 projects. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we examine how teachers’ guides across the projects differ and find substantial variation in the design and structure of the documents. We develop a scripting index so that the scripting levels of the guides can be compared across projects. The impact results of the programs that use teachers’ guides show significant impacts on learning outcomes, associated with approximately an additional half year of learning, showing that structured teachers’ guides contribute to improved learning outcomes. During observations, we find that teachers make a variety of changes in their classroom instruction from how the guides are written, showing that the utilization of structured teachers’ guides do not create robotic teachers unable to use their own professional skills to teach children. Unfortunately, many changes that teachers make reduce the amount of group work and interactivity that was described in the guides, suggesting that programs should encourage teachers to more heavily utilize the instructional routines designed in the guide. The report includes a set of research-based guidelines that material developers can use to develop teachers’ guides that will support effective instructional practices and help improve learning outcomes. The key takeaway from the report is that structured teachers' guides improve learning outcomes, but that overly scripted teachers' guides are somewhat less effective than simplified teachers' guides that give specific guidance to the teacher but are not written word for word for each lesson in the guide.

This paper highlights patterns in school enrollment indicators that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of education systems in a set of low-income countries: those that have expanded access quickly in the last decade or two, but have not yet absorbed that expansion efficiently. Although the patterns in these indicators are observable in the first few years of schooling, they could constitute a cause of low learning outcomes at the end of primary school. The data show strong empirical relationships between an early primary enrollment bulge, low levels of pre-primary participation, and poor performance on early grade cognitive skills. This work does not attribute causal precedence to these patterns but instead argues that the indicators are reflections of each other, constituting a ‘‘knot’’ of issues undermining the foundations of the affected education systems. The article presents some of the cost implications and suggests that many countries are already paying for pre-primary education without realizing it.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Tara Weatherholt. A current challenge in the equitable access to quality pre-primary education for young children is the current lack of relevant and reliable data on pre-primary education to inform improvement of the education sector in developing country contexts. In 2015, the global Measuring Early Learning and Quality Outcomes (MELQO) initiative was formed by UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Bank, and the Brookings Institution to focus on facilitating feasible, accurate, and useful measurement of young pupils’ development at the start of primary school as well as the quality of pre-primary learning environments, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The first nationally representative school readiness study utilizing the MELQO suite of instruments was recently completed in Tanzania. This presentation will report on the quality of pre-primary education environments in both Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, as found through the national MELQO study conducted in early 2017, and how this may inform sector improvement.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Scholastica Tiguryera. While in-service training is an essential component of early grade reading (EGR) projects, it only addresses the current force of teachers and is usually a one-time, resource intensive undertaking. In these efforts, pre-service teacher education is often not addressed overlooking the next generation of teachers who will also need to know how to teach the new reading curriculum. This presentation will discuss how the Uganda Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) has worked with two USAID-funded EGR projects (School Health and Reading Program [SHRP] and Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity [LARA]), a government-run EGR project funded by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), Kyambogo University, and other local partners to develop an addendum to the Primary Teacher Education Curriculum to ensure the early grade reading initiatives introduced by the projects are incorporated into the pre-service teacher training program.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. While there has been recent evidence pointing to the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of pre-primary interventions, there remains little known about how those interventions might work at medium or national scale, nor whether the theoretical impacts of the programs increase, decrease or remain steady over time, nor whether the gains persist into primary school. The endline results from two years of Tayari’s intervention provide longitudinal data on nearly 2500 children who have been evaluated across a range of early learning skills (literacy, numeracy, socio-emotional) at three data points, including their first year of Grade 1. The results presented will explain how Tayari program impacts change over these three data points and determine whether Tayari’s impact persists into Grade 1.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. Tusome is supporting the Ministry’s systems to increase the utilization of monitoring data, and to expand the accountability structures of the government using the data provided by the national literacy program. Of particular interest is the classroom observation data collected by government-paid coaches, in Kenya these officers are called Curriculum Support Officers (CSOs). The data presented in this panel shows how the instructional support structures in Kenya have worked over time, with particular interest in the availability and usage of classroom support data.