Literacy Boost Tigray, Ethiopia Endline Evaluation Report

This report examines the results of a learner background survey and endline reading assessment conducted in June 2014. The survey and reading assessment covered 300 grade 3 learners throughout 15 schools in the Tigray Impact area of Ethiopia. The 15 schools have received Literacy Boost programs for the previous three years. Although this study serves as a follow-up endline to a baseline conducted in the same 15 schools in 2011, it presents data from a new sample of students taken from a different cohort than the students sampled in 2011.

The Literacy Boost program includes teacher training, community reading activities, and age-appropriate local language materials purchased from local bookshops to support emergent literacy skills among early-grade children. These skills include concepts about print, letter awareness, single word reading of most used words, reading fluency, reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. As part of Literacy Boost, learners are periodically assessed in each of these skills through an adaptable assessment tool to inform programming and estimate program impact. The data gathered from these schools is analyzed to present a snapshot of the emergent literacy skills of grade 3 learners in these schools and to inform the adaptation of Save the Children’s (SC’s) Literacy Boost program to this context.