Asia Region/ILOA and ACR-Asia

This study explores the extent to which mother-tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE), as implemented at scale in the Philippines, is having an impact on students’ reading and writing skills in English and Filipino at the end of Grade 3. This 2019 study repeats a 2013 study that evaluated the reading skills of a representative sample of students from across the Philippines using an Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) carried out by RTI, the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd), and a local research firm. In both cases, the study was administered by RTI-trained assessors made up of local education authorities and professional survey researchers. For the 2013 study, the Grade 3 students assessed had completed lower primary under the pre-MTB-MLE curriculum, which used only English and Filipino as the medium of instruction. For this 2019 study, the Grade 3 students had 3 years of learning under the MTB-MLE curriculum, which was designed to teach lower primary students in their mother-tongue language before transitioning into learning in Filipino and English as mediums of instruction in upper primary. [508 Compliant version to be updated].

The objective of this study was to provide insight into the relationships between the teachers’ and students’ language usage, the MTB-MLE policy implementation, and student reading outcomes, especially in areas with linguistically heterogeneous populations. It sought to examine how language usage in the classroom conforms to or diverges from the MTB-MLE policy after six years of implementation, which factors are associated with higher policy implementation, and how language usage by teachers and students relates to student learning outcomes.

A one page description of the Education Technology Ecosystem in the Philippines.

This report is an analysis of the education technology (EdTech) ecosystem in the Philippines. This report seeks to identify opportunities for EdTech alternatives to help the Philippines break away from the status quo in teaching and learning. It will contribute to ongoing policy review and curricular reforms intended to improve country-wide achievement in basic education. The information was gathered by a team of researchers from the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development, Inc. (FIT-ED), and RTI over the course of four months in the second half of 2019. The study team interviewed over 50 key informants from government, civil society, and the private sector and visited schools, consulted relevant documents, and administered a large survey, all designed to answer the questions: what technology is being used in education, how is it being promoted and adopted, what are the effects, and how can good practices be scaled up? The result is the following ecosystem profile, based on the Scaling Equitable Education Technology (EdTech) Ecosystem Model published by Omidyar Network, now Imaginable Futures,1in 2019 (Omidyar Network, 2019a). Cite this report: Pouezevara, S. (2020). Philippines EdTech ecosystem profile. Prepared for USAID under the All Children Reading-Philippines Project, AID-OAA-TO-16-00017. Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI

CIES presentation of Early Childhood Education landscape report for the Asia region under All Children Reading - Asia.

The Barometer offers a dynamic tool for interactive use of data on early grade reading outcomes. The ability to look at how the data are impacted by different parameters, like the level at which a reading benchmark is set, allows users to consider what benchmark and target for students achieving that benchmark in the near term may or may not be realistic. Furthermore, when such data are available, the Barometer also allows users to review the impact of interventions that have contributed to improving reading outcomes, and then factor in whether they can expect those kinds of improvements in the future, given the different investments and initiatives underway in their countries. The presentation is a short demonstration of these two features of the Barometer – target setting and considering the impact of previous or current interventions. Presented at CIES 2019.

Over the course of four years (ending in 2016), the Department of Education (DepEd) in the Philippines grew increasingly self-sufficient at managing all aspects of early grade reading assessments (EGRAs). As DepEd’s capacity developed over time, the role of the technical assistance provided through the Education Data for Decision Making project (EdData II) shifted, diminished, and then disappeared altogether. International development professionals sometimes cite the cliché, “If we were truly successful, we would be working ourselves out of a job.” That sentiment now informs USAID’s goal to help each country on a journey to self-reliance. The EdData II project’s work in the Philippines provides some examples of what such a journey might include.

What conditions make it possible to accomplish significant capacity development without running any workshops, without requiring any explicit project deliverables, and with only three short-term technical assistance trips over the course of 19 months? The All Children Reading–Cambodia Activity has been supporting the Education Quality Assurance Department (EQAD) of the education ministry in Cambodia since February 2017. An EQAD staffer, asked about the assistance, said, “The value of the support …is more than I can express… Through collaboration with [the project], EQAD has developed remarkably.” This case study examines how a different approach to providing technical assistance helped EQAD make those “remarkable” strides toward self-reliance.

The purpose of this brief is to answer the question: What are the considerations for effective ECE programming in the Asia region? To answer, we focus on the quality and sustainability, including governance and financing, of ECE. The four subject briefs provide evidence and present considerations for the following topics: ECE assessments, including measures of child learning and assessments of the quality of learning environments; Approaches to quality teaching and learning, focusing on emergent literacy and early mathematics, with consideration given to the language of instruction; Ensuring early childhood educator quality; and Sustainability of ECE.

Assessment of learning and the quality of early learning environments is an important component of early childhood education. This brief outlines the existing early learning assessments of children and environments used in the Asia region, excluding diagnostic and screening assessments.