How Effective was SCI’s Ready to Learn Intervention in Supporting O-Class Children’s Transition to Primary School Children in SNNP and Sidama Regions of Ethiopia?

Education is the right of children and save the children supports such right to be met, focusing on pre-primary and primary in Ethiopia. There were two projects supported by Save Italy and implemented over two phases, with the first from 2017 to 2019 and the second round from 2020-2021.This is assessment report sought to evaluate the effectiveness of school readiness project in Sidama and SNNPR from 2019-2021. There were 28 intervention schools with the second-round intervention. As the second-round intervention was completed in July 2021, this assessment aimed at finding out the changes brought about by the intervention, what worked well and what did not with the project intervention and to draw lesson for future intervention.

The findings indicated that there are more gains from intervention than from comparison schools. That is, both intervention and comparison began with the same baseline IDELA value (46%) measuring literacy, numeracy, socioemotional and psychomotor domain and each scored different value (intervention reached at 82% while comparison at 69%). Besides, girls performed relatively better than boys, both at the intervention (80% versus 79%) and comparison (65 % versus 64%) with total IDELA. This indicates that the intervention has been effective.