Early grade reading in South Africa Lessons from a large scale intervention 1 October 2016 Stephen Taylor

The diagnosis Pre-PIRLS 2011: 58% of grade 4 children could not read for meaning in any language Evidence overwhelming PIRLS, SACMEQ, ANA

But how to affect change on scale? Doesn’t always follow directly from the diagnosis e.g. parent involvement catch 22 Binding constraints Dropping resources We know how to systematically teach reading But instructional practices are far from it in many schools Changing ingrained behaviours on scale

A Theory of Change Think about textbooks

A Theory of Change Think about textbooks Or teacher training: (Ben Piper)

Evaluation and Research for Policy Qualitative and quantitative methods interpret each other. Qualitative research: when, where, how and why questions Hypothesis generating; Types of situations requires fine-grained analysis small scale expert fieldworkers

Evaluation and Research for Policy Qualitative and quantitative methods interpret each other. Quantitative research: Policy maker must know the average effect Compare 30% impact on 10% of targeted schools to 10% impact on 60% of targeted schools Train 1 way versus another way Cost-effectiveness: R1000 per learner to impact on 70% of target group vs R500 to impact 20% of target group

DBE research agenda What interventions (built on evidence from elsewhere) make an impact in the SA context? Replicable costs and human capacity For some level of “scale” What differences exist in the “pre-reading abilities” of children at the start of school? Girls and boys Home characteristics Urban and rural schools How do reading inequalities evolve over time? What levels of reading fluency in grades 1 and 2 are required for successful learning in later grades?

Example of a recent evaluation Grade 4 learners not ready for ENG as LOLT Therefore FP interventions in HL & EFAL

Example of a recent evaluation

Who is involved? Initiated and driven by DBE Largely donor funded ZENEX FOUNDATION, Anglo American, DPME in Presidency, UNICEF, 3ie, NW PED Steering Committee DBE, Treasury, DPME, PEDs, Donors Research Team WITS, Stellenbosch, HSRC, Georgetown University

EGRS 1 Project design Goal: To improve HL literacy (Setswana) 230 schools in the North West: Quintile 1-3 schools using Setswana as LOLT Project duration is 2 years: following Grade 1 cohort (2015) into Grade 2 (2016) We administer 3 interventions and evaluate their impact relative to a valid control group Baseline survey Jan/Feb 2015; midline Nov 2015; endline Nov 2016 Survey includes testing learners, parent questionnaire, teacher questionnaire, principal questionnaire

Description of Interventions 230 schools in North West

Description of Interventions 230 schools in North West Per learner costs Triple cocktail: Expensive for national roll-out, but R7m – R8m for one grade in 100 priority schools.

Interesting to note from baseline An ageing teacher population Girls substantially outperform boys at the start of school Parent characteristics predict school readiness (including taking responsibility for child’s education)

Main Results by end of Grade 1 (3 terms of intervention) Pedagogical interventions: About a quarter of a year of learning Parent involvement: Negligible average effect Possibly an effect for those who attend Main Results by end of Grade 1 (3 terms of intervention)

Sub-group effects Intervention 3 appears to have had an impact amongst the strongest learners More involved parents attended? The positive impact for interventions 1 and 2 is clearest for boys Helps boys catch up to girls?

Sub-group effects Large impact in urban schools Possibly zero impact in rural schools Clear impact in monograde schools Possibly zero impact in multi-grade schools Depends on teacher absenteeism Impact of all 3 interventions higher amongst teachers less commonly absent

Impacts on intermediate outcomes Intervention 2 teachers more frequently conducted individualized reading assessments Increased reading resources evident in classrooms especially of Setswana posters. More exercises completed of all types (including drawing pictures) of written exercises and full sentence writing exercises

Forthcoming Endline testing Oct/Nov 2016 Qualitative survey (60 schools) – October Case studies Extension of Interventions 1 and 2 in grade 3 in 2017 Future data collection Persistence of impacts Inform reading norms