The idea of the literacy and numeracy advisory committee started with “literacy” specifically, to offer advisory support on sustainability of EGR activities of Projects funded by USAID. During Basic Education Working Group meetings, members agreed to add numeracy, on the premise that developing children’s foundation skills of both literacy and numeracy is vital during the formative years. The purpose of the advisory committee is to ensure that organizational, systemic, and institutional capacity gaps and needs are identified and relevant organs receive guidance to act on measures to fill the gaps and ensure cost effective EGR/Numeracy activities are sustained. It is composed of senior and mid-level MoES official responsible for successful implementation of primary curriculum, with a specific focus on EGR and numeracy, drawn from BE and SE, DES, NCDC, TIET, SNE, Districts, Kyambogo University and development partners. The committee reports to the MoES PS and has authority to make recommendations for policy review and formulation of a new set of policy documents contributing to a new Sector Strategic Plan, including EGR and Numeracy. It also monitors programming, provides oversight and offers related guidance on interventions and strategies. The project supported MoES to develop a Terms of Reference to create a structure for the work of the Advisory Committee.

This information pack is based on the data pack developed and used by the MoES, UKAID and Cambride Education for their design confultation workshop held in April 2018. Many of the slides here were taken directly from that pack, with permission from Cambridge Education. We sincely appreciate being able to use their data pack as a starting point for this information pack. Selection of Data and Resources for the UKAID/Cambridge Education SESIL slides Data sources have been taken from a variety of sources and are referenced on each slide in the bottom left-hand corner. The dates referenced in the source information relate to when the data was collected (rather than published) to provide the most accurate picture possible of currently available and accessible information. Only data that was externally collected, validated from multiple sources and nationally or internationally published was included. Data for the USAID/RTI and GPE slides Data are from program monitoring records and other evaluative and survey efforts and provide more Uganda specific data to support and provide more depth to the national and international data.

In December 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation convened a workshop examining four education systems that have worked to build coherence across their systems, as viewed by “insiders” who played a significant role in carefully studying, designing, or maintaining the systems. This information note summarizes the knowledge shared at the workshop and was produced at the request of key stakeholders at the meeting. It is intended for the benefit of the participants and those who may be designing systems interventions or research, especially around the issue of the "instructional core" and the coherence among the various elements of the instructional core. The note is presented as an informal contribution.

Despite successes in improving access to primary education, the Malawi education system has struggled to produce high levels of learning. The country has consistently ranked at or near the bottom in regional learning assessments, and an Early Grade Reading Assessment conducted in 2010 showed that 76 percent of Standard 2 learners could not identify any letters. To address the low reading performance, The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) partnered with the Government of Malawi to pilot several projects aimed at improving reading performance. The lessons from these pilot projects led to the development of a National Reading Strategy (NRS) and a National Reading Program (NRP). With support from USAID, the NRP’s goal is to improve the reading skills of all students in Chichewa and English in the first four years of primary school. It does this through reforms to the curriculum, teacher professional development and coaching, development and distribution of teaching and learning materials, continuous assessment and remediation, and targeted support for learners. USAID supports the NRP by providing finance and technical assistance through several activities including MERIT: Malawi Early Grade Reading Improvement Activity (MERIT), Yesani Ophunzira (YESA), Strengthening Early Grade Reading in Malawi (SEGREM) and Reading for All Malawi (REFAM). This is the recording of the #vCIES 2020 conference session, which includes representatives from the MoEST and NRP implementation partners discussing their roles in supporting the NRP and sharing lessons around their approach, achievements, and challenges as they collaborate to get all children learning. The combined experiences of the partners will be useful for other projects, organizations, and governments who are looking to make a wide-scale change in their education systems.

There is an abundance of research about the costs of measuring the SDGs. Institutions with the mandate to measure the SDGs are busy estimating costs and making plans to improve both reporting and capacity within countries. However, some observers and commentators are skeptical about the benefits of measurement. This CIES 2019 presentation takes a “value of information” approach to calculating the benefits of having and using information by asking: what is the social (monetary) benefit of running an education system with full information versus running the same education system with only limited information?

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.

The Government of Tanzania is in the process of implementing a policy of one year of free and compulsory pre-primary education for all children. The policy pronouncement was made within the context of limited resources for education and unclear implementation guidelines. Nonetheless, the declaration of fee-free and compulsory pre-primary led to an immediate increase in enrolment of 46% in the year after the policy was established. While access has improved, quality has not. A recent study of school readiness of children starting Standard 1 in Mainland Tanzania (78% of whom completed pre-school) found no difference between those who attended pre-primary school and those who did not (RTI International, 2017). The study also found weaknesses in the quality of early learning environments, such as high pupil-teacher ratios, poor pedagogy, and lack of high-quality teaching and learning materials. The key challenge facing the Government of Tanzania is how to develop an early learning system that can produce learning, not just broaden access, and to do so in a manner that is sustainable. Earlier experiences with the drive for universal primary education have shown that it is possible (and perhaps easier) to improve access to school without producing any learning. The current study uses a scale and sustainability framework proposed by Crouch and DeStefano (2017) to examine the extent to which the pre-primary (early learning) education system in mainland Tanzania is set up to provide quality pre-primary at scale and sustainably. They identified a core set of functions that education systems should be able to perform to produce learning: (1) set and communicate learning expectations; (2) monitor against expectations; and (3) provide minimum inputs to all schools, and targeted support to struggling schools and classrooms. We interviewed various actors at the national, district and school levels including government officials from the ministries responsible for education and local government; head teachers; teachers; parents of pre-primary aged children; and lecturers and administrators from teacher training colleges. In addition, we reviewed policies, plans, and strategies related to education and development. We found that the early learning system is still developing its capacity to perform the identified core functions. There are some learning goals outlined in a new curriculum, but most of the goals expressed in plans and policies relate to access, not learning, and are not known throughout the system. Monitoring against learning is weak as officials responsible for monitoring schools are unable to do so on a regular basis, and even when they do go, their observation protocols are not linked to learning or curricula expectations. Accountability mechanisms are weak as there is not enough data within the system to track performance against learning expectations. Finally, the Government of Tanzania struggles with providing basic instructional inputs – teachers, teaching and learning materials, continued professional development – to the pre-primary school system. This study and its findings are important because they point to priority areas for system reform for the Government of Tanzania and other countries facing the challenge of producing learning at scale sustainably.

This panel shared presentations from Uganda government officials and development partners which are collaboratively engaged in the efforts to improve and assess EGR in Uganda’s primary schools. Panel participants will discuss the process of gradually scaling up program activities to reach the majority of the nation’s schools by working with and through government structures. The Uganda MoES which has led the process from the begin will discuss how it has worked with donors and other development partners to mobilize resources and technical assistance by incorporating EGR in the ministry’s overall strategic plans. The Uganda National Examinations Board and the Uwezo Uganda initiative will discuss how they have been able to scale up assessment of Ugandan children’s reading skills through government ownership and civil society engagement in conducting early grade reading assessments. The GPE, SHRP, and LARA projects will share how they have worked through government structures at both the national and district levels to develop instructional materials in 12 local languages plus English and improve EGR instruction and learning in schools in a sustainable way. The panel will illustrate that attaining measurable improvements in reading scores at scale takes considerably more time and effort than smaller scale and pilot programs because interventions at scale require working through government structures and personnel, requiring systems strengthening and capacity building while also implementing program activities. This requires enormous effort and constant collaboration among government and development partners with sustainability as the ultimate objective.