Making Real Progress: Using Teaching at the Right Level to Strengthen Foundational Learning in South Sudan (2026)

A case study where Save the Children is strengthening its focus on levelled learning – approaches that meet children at their current learning level rather than their grade. In South Sudan, we are applying Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), a well-established, evidence-based approach, and adapting its delivery to the realities of crisis-affected schools. Save the Children is bringing the approach to South Sudan for the first time – adapting the approach to one of the world’s most challenging places to learn. Our first pilot with 1,633 children shows it works! The pilot showed how just 13 weeks of targeted learning transformed reading outcomes: the proportion of children able to read sentences and whole stories with full comprehension rose from 28% to 61%.