Tracy Brunette

Though many of the issues we are facing in ensuring children worldwide are in school and learning are not new, COVID-19 has magnified the challenges. This pandemic has impacted nearly all facets of the world’s education systems and programs at the same time. Assessing children’s learning achievement is one important aspect of education support and reform; it is essential to know if children are learning. Yet many assessment efforts can no longer take place as planned. How can we gauge learning when best laid plans are out?

Tablet programs are extremely popular among beneficiaries. And we get it. When a grant opportunity came up to provide tablets and training to Coordinating Center Tutors (CCTs)[1], the USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program jumped. We had been working with CCTs since 2013 and had a strong process in place involving literacy-focused classroom observation tools and a system of joint support supervision designed to build capacity of the CCTs while supporting teachers at the schools.

This post was written by Kalab Yakii, program field assistant in Arua district, and Tracy Brunette, RTI.

The USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program implemented by RTI has developed a system for getting school and community level information to program technical teams quickly.  Last week, a story came through the usual weekly reports that needed to be shared. 

A Simple Innovation

Collaborate, Learn and Adapt (CLA): Building an Effective M&E Culture in a Uganda Education Project

What does it take to get one child reading? What does it take to get millions of children reading? Accomplishing such major feats at a national scale, for instance in Uganda, requires a major team effort. It takes collaborative initiatives like supporting the Ugandan Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) to train over 53,000 teachers, developing and distributing over 5 million reading primers (in 12 local languages and English) and providing ongoing support to over 10,000 schools.