Advancing the Right to Read in Rwanda: Key programme achievements & learning

The Advancing the Right to Read in Rwanda (ARR) programme was designed as a direct response to the critical challenge of quality of learning in Rwanda. Save the Children identified the lack of sufficient support for Rwandan children in developing school readiness and foundational literacy skills as a critical gap underlying this learning crisis. There’s a common belief in Rwanda, as in many other countries throughout the world, that responsibility for ensuring children master the skills to read and write falls primarily upon teachers within the wider context of the government-led education system. However, the process of children acquiring the fundamental skills that will contribute to their future reading and learning outcomes start well before children enter into the formal school system, and even once children are in school, the actual time spent under the tutelage of teachers is a small fraction of the overall number of waking hours across a year in the child’s life.

From the onset of the programme in 2013, the Advancing the Right to Read programme set out to demonstrate the benefit on learning outcomes of starting early, supporting life-long learning for children inside and outside of school settings, providing access to quality, local language reading material, and promoting a favourable context in which all children leave school able to read. Over the past 5 years, through the implementation of multiple projects, the programme supported the delivery of a range of services for children aged 0 – 9.