The Ethiopia TEACH II activity aimed to strengthen the provision of equitable basic education services by implementing alternative basic education for children and youth, functional literacy for adults and improving the capacity of Woreda Education Offices (WEO) to manage non-formal educational programs. The activity operated in eight regions and provided instruction in four languages. The target population of the study were Level II learners from selected woredas in the SNNP, Tigray, Amhara, Benishangul, Oromia, Afar, Gambella, and Somali regions where PACT-Ethiopia and its partners operated. Students were randomly selected to measure basic literacy skills targeted at the Grade 2 level using EGRA assessments in eight different languages. The EGRA assessment sub-tasks measuring basic literacy skills were incremental in their complexity. Each sub-task was presented to the child on a one–to-one basis. Questionnaires were also administered to understand the background of the students. This data file contains the project's endline EGRA.

The overall aim of the USAID/SA basic education program is to improve primary grade reading outcomes by building teacher effectiveness and strengthening classroom and school management. This is being accomplished through support to innovative, local interventions that have a demonstrated capacity for scale-up. The main USAID/SA program is the School Capacity and Innovation Program (SCIP), which also leverages significant private sector resources, amplifying the impact of USAID’s investment in the South African education system. SCIP is co-funded by The ELMA Foundation and J.P. Morgan and designed in collaboration with the South African Department of Basic Education. SCIP supports local South African models or interventions that work directly with teachers and school management teams in innovative ways in order to improve their practice as instructional leaders and managers. SCIP is aligned to the USAID Global Education Strategy (2011–2015) which supports interventions to improve learning outcomes with a focus on primary grade reading as a measure of performance. In addition to seeking initiatives that demonstrate innovation and impact, sustainability and scalability are key components of the SCIP program. The Teacher Assessment Resources for Monitoring and Improving Instruction for Foundation Phase (TARMII-FP) will provide teachers with a computer-based assessment tool that will help teachers to more effectively address individual student learning needs in literacy. TARMII-FP is implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council and is co-funded by USAID, the ELMA Foundation, and J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, with non-financial support from the South African Department of Basic Education. This $1.5 million project, part of the SCIP, is designed to improve primary grade reading outcomes by building teacher effectiveness and strengthening classroom and school management. Running from July 2012 to June 2015, TARMII-FP will enable teachers to draw upon a database of thousands of reading activities and test items to generate assessments and homework exercises tailored for their students. The tool will allow teachers to record and analyze student results.

The Tusome Early Grade Reading Program involves a national effort in Kenya to scale up a proven model for improved results in early grade literacy. Based on positive findings during a rigorous impact evaluation of a pilot test of this intervention, the Government of Kenya (GOK) asked USAID/Kenya to assist with the nationwide rollout of an activity to improve reading skills and increase the capacity of educators and the GOK to deliver and administer early grade reading (EGR) programs modeled on the pilot activity’s success. Tusome, which means “Let’s Read” in Kiswahili, targeted 28,000 formal and nonformal public and low-cost private primary schools in the 47 counties in Kenya (nationwide). About 1,000 of these are informal schools that exist mostly in urban “slums,” while the vast majority of the remaining 27,000 schools are in rural areas. Roughly 5.4 million children who entered primary school between 2014 and 2017 are expected to benefit from this scaling-up initiative. Intermediate beneficiaries include: 1) approximately 60,000 class 1 and 2 teachers, 2) 28,000 primary school head teachers, 3) 1,052 Teacher Advisory Center (TAC) tutors, plus “coaches” for nonformal schools and 4) 300 senior education personnel. Tusome also assisted the GOK at the technical and policy levels to sustainably improve reading skills beyond the span of the activity.

The Liberia Teacher Training Program II (LTTP II) is a partnership between FHI 360 and RTI International to provide support to the central Ministry of Education (MOE). The overarching goal of LTTP II is to enhance pupils' learning in general, and reading proficiency in particular; establish a functional teacher professional development (PD) system; and strengthen the MOE’s capacity to manage such a system. The LTTP II was originally designed to work in nine counties: Grand Gedeh, Grand Kru, Lofa, Maryland, Montserrado, Nimba, River Cess, River Gee, and Sinoe. In 2011 and 2012, because of changes in USAID policies, the number of counties was reduced to five (i.e., Bong, Lofa, Margibi, Montserrado, and Nimba), which USAID identifies as a development corridor, containing a majority of the Liberian population. The LTTP II intervention drew on the EGRA Plus model to introduce similarly structured reading and math programs in grades 1, 2, and 3 to approximately 1,020 schools in four counties (i.e., Bong, Lofa, Montserrado, and Nimba) in a phased approach. Cohort 1, the first to receive support, had 792 schools. During the middle of the 2011/2012 school year, the reading program was introduced in all three grades in these schools. During the middle of the 2012/2013 school year, the mathematics program was introduced in all three grades. Cohort 2, consisting of approximately 330 schools, began participating in the program’s reading and mathematics interventions during the 2013/2014 school year and continued during the 2014/2015 school year. Some changes, although not significant, were made to the intervention approach for supporting the Cohort 2 schools. Schools in the four LTTP II counties were randomly assigned to the Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 groupings. These schools were then grouped in clusters of 12 schools based on geographic proximity, which would allow the program to deliver the interventions more efficiently Cohort 1: Schools from the four target counties included in Cohort 1 served as the treatment group for the midterm assessment. These schools stopped receiving LTTP II support after the midterm assessment, but they participated in the endline assessment, as a way to determine whether the gains that were achieved during the treatment were sustained. Cohort 2: Schools included in Cohort 2 in the same four counties began to receive treatment after the midterm assessment—thus, during the final two years of the program. Cohort 2 schools served as a control to which the Cohort 1 results were compared. The performance of Cohort 2 schools were to be compared to that of Cohort 1. The biggest challenge that the program faced regarding the implementation in Cohort 2 schools was the school closings because of the Ebola crisis. Schools were closed between September 2014 and February 2015. Even after the official reopening date, with the gradual actual opening of schools that required LTTP II to wait until schools were safe to open, it took several months to distribute books to schools and to train teachers which in turn severely affected the implementation of the treatment. External Cohort: A randomly selected sample of schools outside the four target counties served as another comparator, especially after Cohort 2 began receiving treatment alongside Cohort 1. Except for a small number of schools associated with the RTTIs, schools outside the four target counties did not participate in the program during the lifetime of LTTP II. This data file contains the 2011 EGRA baseline.

The USAID/Kenya Primary Math and Reading (PRIMR) initiative is a task order under the USAID Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) project that operates in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) and USAID/Kenya, and implemented by RTI International. The program is a randomized controlled trial intervention that included formal (public or government) schools and low-cost private schools (LCPS) located in Nairobi, Kiambu, Nakuru and Kisumu counties. PRIMR and its Kenyan partners created, published, and distributed new teaching and learning materials, based on the existing Kenyan curriculum; designed and led professional development to build the skills of educators and improve student literacy outcomes; and introduced a number of innovative teaching methods. Teachers and head teachers received training to encourage active learning and participation by both girls and boys in the classroom and were further supported with frequent visits and advising by trained instructional coaches. By mutual agreement among the MoEST, USAID, and RTI, approximately 500 formal schools and LCPSs located in Nairobi, Kiambu, Nakuru, and Kisumu counties were to participate in the PRIMR Initiative. To choose the sample of formal schools, the project team first selected all eligible zones from within the selected locations, then randomly assigned a subset of zones to groups that would receive the PRIMR treatment in phases (Cohorts 1, 2, and 3). Across all three cohorts, 262 formal schools were selected. Sampling for LCPSs began by clustering the schools into geographic groups of either 10 or 15 schools from across Nairobi’s divisions. Twenty clusters then were randomly assigned to Cohorts 1, 2, or 3, stratified by geographic region. The number of LCPSs selected was 240. In January 2012, the Cohort 1 schools (125 schools: 66 public, 59 LCPS) began implementing the reading interventions using PRIMR-designed materials and techniques, and the math intervention followed beginning in July 2012. The Cohort 2 schools (185: 65 public, 120 LCPS) began reading and math interventions in January 2013. Cohort 3 schools (101: 51 public, 50 LCPS) served as a control group for most of the program, and then began receiving the full intervention during the final stages of PRIMR (January 2014). In addition, it was decided that the 2014 phase of the intervention would be extended to all 547 remaining schools, rather than only to Cohort 3 as originally planned. As a result, the number of pupils benefitting increased from 12,755 in January 2012 to 56,036 in January 2014. Randomly selected students from all treatment and control schools were assessed via administration of a combined Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA), and Snapshot of School Management Effectiveness (SSME) at three time points: baseline, midterm, and endline. The PRIMR Initiative’s research design included several “experiments within an experiment.” These consisted of a study of three different combinations of information and communication technology (ICT) as teaching and learning aids in selected schools in Kisumu County; a longitudinal study of about 600 students who were assessed at all three time points, with their reading and numeracy competency levels compared and contrasted across the assessments; and MoEST-driven policy research on various education issues at the national level.

The Early Grade Reading program in Ghana, implemented under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Partnership for Education Learning Activity, was evaluated with a quasi-experimental impact evaluation between 2017 and 2019. This data asset contains the three waves of data collected in Ghana during this time period.

The PALME project (Partenariat pour l’Amélioration de la Lecture et des Mathématiques à l’Ecole Elémentaire) reflects national priorities for education development and is a central program of PAQUET, the new national Education Sector Plan 2012-2025 (Programme d’ Amélioration de la Qualité, de l’Equité et de la Transparence). PALME seeks to improve the reading and math learning outcomes of primary school students in Senegal. It illustrates two major shifts in the government policy agenda: a) away from access to education to a focus on the quality of learning, and b) the move away from individual donor projects to government leadership and use of government systems for bi-lateral and multi-lateral financing.

Read To Succeed Project (RTS) was a five-year project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ). With Zambia exhibiting the lowest student achievement scores among the South African Development Community – SADC, RTS took a “whole school, whole teacher, whole child” approach to ensure that Government Basic Schools become centers of learning, care and support providing children with opportunities to learn and flourish. RTS aimed to improve early grade reading through school effectiveness in Government primary schools in six provinces: Eastern, Luapula, Northern, North Western, Western and the newly-created Muchinga. For each of the baseline, midline and endline evaluations, RTS tested grade 2 and 3 students’ reading ability in the four local languages Icibemba, Chinyanja, Kiikaonde and Silozi in government primary schools. A representative sample of students was randomly selected from schools across 16 districts (12 intervention and 4 control districts) within the 6 provinces. The 4 control districts were selected based on 4 local languages in which EGRA was conducted. The selection of schools was stratified by language and clustered by location, specifically by zone, district, and province.