Iraq

The Early Grade Reading Barometer is an interactive dashboard that lets you: - SEE an overview of how well students are reading, the percentage of struggling readers, and how comprehension is associated with reading fluency. - VIEW information about student performance on EGRA subtasks. See how outcomes vary by key student and school characteristics. - EXPLORE how different EGRA subtasks are related to one another. View graphic displays of these relationships. - CHOOSE a target oral reading fluency benchmark, and see information on how many students are meeting the targeted benchmark now and how the percentage of students meeting the benchmark value could change over time. - SEE how countries compare with each other with respect to student outcomes on EGRA assessments and progress towards meeting UN SDG Goal 4. - REVIEW the impact of interventions aimed at improving the fundamental reading skills of students. - COMPARE how the distributions for selected EGRA subtasks have changed or remained the same over time.

Under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) contract, RTI International was awarded Task Order (TO) number 14, Iraq Education Surveys project–MAHARAT (the Arabic word for “skills”), which sought to improve education-related services and the quality of primary schools in Iraq. The US$3.7 million fixed-price contract consisted of three education surveys to be administered in Iraq over a period of 14 months, starting on October 1, 2011, through December 1, 2012.

This analysis report was written to gain insight into both student facility with foundational skills and to better understand characteristics among Iraqi schools associated with this performance. In 2012, USAID/Iraq, in partnership with the Ministry of Education (MoED), contracted with RTI International under the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) project to conduct an EGRA, EGMA, and SSME in a sample of primary schools in Iraq.

This presentation, delivered at the MENA region All Children Reading workshop in Rabat, provides an overview of results to date in the region and introduces the early grade reading barometer.