CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. The Tusome national literacy program has been implemented in each of Kenya’s more than 22,000 public primary schools and 1500 low cost private schools in the slums since 2015. In addition to showing the comparisons between before and after Tusome’s implementation, this presentation will examine Tusome implementation data to reveal key characteristics of the scale-up framework that Tusome was designed to respond to. In particular, we share the extent of classroom utilization of the Tusome materials, the size of the classroom observational structures that Tusome tried to revitalize, and the responses of the community to the Tusome intervention. The findings suggest that Tusome had a substantial impact on literacy outcomes in both Kiswahili and English, in both Grade 1 and 2, in both public and low cost private settings, and in both urban and rural settings. This means that the program’s effect meant that nearly 1 million more children were able to be considered readers by the midterm intervention.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Ben Piper. The Kenyan Ministry of Education (MoE) in collaboration with RTI International and the county Governments of Laikipia, Nairobi, Siaya and Uasin Gishu have been piloting the Tayari Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) model since 2014. Built on a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), RTI has been tracking a cohort of learners from both treatment 2 and control schools over the last two years: The baseline data was collected in January 2016; midline in October 2016, at the end of the academic school year; and endline a year later in October 2017. The overall effect of Tayari showed a larger effect at midline – after ten months of implementation – than was expected at end line, i.e. after two years of implementation. The gains in the Tayari group was about 50% higher than in the control group.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Jessica Mejia. In order to understand how literacy programs differ with respect to the amount of scripting in teachers’ guides, we studied teachers’ guide documents from 19 projects in 13 countries. We present the quantitative differences in the level of scripting in these projects. In addition, we selected four countries that had substantial differences in the level and type of scripting in their teachers’ guides. We observed classrooms in those contexts to determine what type of modifications teachers made to the lesson plan as written in the teachers’ guides. We also interviewed the teachers and asked them to describe the reasons for their modifications to the teachers’ guides.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Jessica Mejia. The gradual release of responsibility model has been a primary instructional approach in many early grade literacy programs, including the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity in Kenya. The use of this model dominates literacy instruction for English and Kiswahili in grades one and two. It has been proven successful teaching the very basic skills of literacy at a national scale, rapidly improving learning outcomes in Kenya. The expansion of Tusome to grade 3 by the Kenyan Ministry of Education 2017 required a careful examination of whether and how a precise adherence to the gradual release model is appropriate for higher order skills such as vocabulary, comprehension strategies and writing in Grade 3. Instead, these skills and this grade level lend themselves to a less rigid hold on the gradual release model. When designing Tusome’s Grade 3 instructional materials, a combination of gradual release for the word study and grammar activities and direct instruction for the vocabulary, comprehension and writing activities was used. The leadership of Tusome worked closely with the Kenya Institute for Curriculum Development to develop this new set of teaching and learning materials for Grade 3 which will be implemented in the 2018 academic year. This presentation discusses the rationale for a reduction in the adherence to the gradual release model in the design of the Grade 3 materials.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Dunston Kwayumba. In many developing countries, subjects are taught and tested in the child’s second or third language. In Kenya, for example, all subjects are taught and examined in English, other than languages such as Kiswahili. Understanding how language skills transfer in language complex environments like Kenya is relatively under-researched using empirical methods. Using an explanatory mixed methods design, the proposed research study will use correlation analysis to examine the effect of literacy interventions on learning outcomes in other subjects. It will answer research questions on the effect of literacy intervention on learning outcomes in English, Kiswahili and other subjects taught at class 2 in Kenya. The study will also investigate the perceptions of head teachers, teachers and curriculum support officers on the specific aspects of intervention programs that could be attributed to the improved or lack of improvement in learning outcomes in the non-language subjects. This is a critical research topic given the number of countries that have been engaging in large scale literacy interventions without careful thought on whether the expected and pre-supposed impact on learning outcomes in other subjects is empirically evident. This is essential to creating and sustaining community buy-in into these literacy programs, as it is local communities that are often the most resistant to local language literacy programs given the unclear relationship with learning outcomes in these critical other subjects.

CIES 2018 Presentation, given by Rachel Jordan. In Uganda, and many other settings, too few children are learning how to read. In response, countries have embarked on national reading programs. Unfortunately, these programs are rarely evaluated rigorously at a large scale. This paper is based on larger research that efforts looked at the impact of a large-scale mother tongue reading program in Uganda using a randomized control trial in twelve language communities. It also looked at the differences in mother tongue reading acquisition attributed to linguistic differences, differences in program implementation and socioeconomic differences in the communities. The research points to language complexity as an important predictor of reading acquisition. Aspects of this complexity (transparency, tonal markings, agglutination) will be discussed in the 12 languages supported by current early grade reading reform efforts. Tying into language mapping efforts, the paper will also discuss the realities of language mapping on the ground where, for example, regardless of the predominant language spoken by the school community the school language of instruction is decided at the district level.

This CIES 2018 presentation describes the Journeys Program, which focuses on building a positive and supportive school climate for learning which is free from violence. The program was developed under the USAID/Uganda funded Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity, which simultaneously supports the Ministry of Education goals of improving early grade reading and retention and eliminating violence against children in schools. The presentation was given by RTI's Geri Burkholder.

Jordan RAMP, funded by USAID and UKAID, is a nationwide initiative of the Jordanian Ministry of Education (MoE) designed to improve the reading and mathematics skills of students in kindergarten 2 through grade 3 (K2–G3). RAMP, which is being carried out over five years (2015 to 2019), expects to deliver improved reading and mathematics instruction to all public school students in Jordan in grades K2–G3—about 400,000 students. This CIES 2018 presentation, given by Aarnout Brombacher, Senior Technical Advisor on the RAMP initiative, shares findings from the midline study of the project, which was conducted at the end of the 2016–2017 academic year (May 2017). The study included the EGRA and EGMA assessments as well as a range of teacher and pupil questionnaires.

This CIES 2018 presentation is an overview of findings from classroom observations of teachers implementing the Jordan RAMP initiative problem-solving technique in teaching early grade mathematics. The presentation was given by Aarnout Brombacher, RTI's Senior Technical Advisor for the Jordan RAMP initiative.

The Uganda Early Years Enrolment and Repetition Study presentation references the work undertaken by RTI International to examine repetition rates and over-enrolment in primary 1 in Uganda, to analyze the financial impact of these inefficiencies in the education sector, and present a cost projection model to examine the impact of investments made to pre-primary and early primary.