Literacy Boost Dendi, Ethiopia: Baseline Report 2010

This report shares reading assessment results of 400 children in 20 schools in Dendi, Ethiopia. Fifteen of the schools are piloting Literacy Boost during 2010-2011, an innovative program to support children’s development of the five key reading skills (letter knowledge, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension). This report reviews the baseline data on children’s background, reading skills scores and their interrelationships, setting the stage of the intervention as well as follow up analyses.

With a few exceptions, Literacy Boost and control schools are comparable in socioeconomic setting and access to literacy resources in their environments. Where there are significant differences, they are not in a single direction: controls school students have more household appliances/amenities, but Literacy Boost schools have more rooms in the home. Similarly, Literacy Boost students report more reading materials at home, but there are no differences between the groups on measures of reading habits. This suggests that these communities are at a similar socioeconomic status and have comparable reading habits.