World Vision India Pro-Lit Baseline Report: Hindi & English Reading Skills of Grade 2 & 3 Students in Agra, Aparajita, Borio, and Dumka ADPs December 2014

This report examines the results of a baseline student background survey and reading assessment conducted in August and September 2014 as part of World Vision’s Literacy Boost (LB) initiative which is run as the project called Promoting Literacy for Children, or Pro-Lit. The survey and reading assessment covered 1159 grade 2 & 3 students in 80 government primary schools in Uttar Pradesh State (Agra and Aparajita ADPs) and Jharkhand State (Borio and Dumka ADPs). As part of Literacy Boost, students will be periodically assessed in each of these skills through an adaptable assessment tool to inform programming and estimate program impact.

This data serves as a baseline assessment for Pro-Lit, which includes community reading activities and age-appropriate local language material creation to support emergent literacy skills among early-grade children. These skills include letter awareness, single word reading of most used words, decoding of invented words, reading fluency, reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. As part of Literacy Boost, students will be periodically assessed in each of these skills through an adaptable assessment tool to inform programming and estimate program impact.

The key research questions to be explored in this report include the following:

• What can the baseline tell us about students’ emergent reading skills? What does this mean for LB programming?
• How do students’ reading skills vary by student background, school environment, home literacy environment, and other dimensions of equity? What does this mean for targeting Literacy Boost’s two strands of intervention (i.e. Community Action and school-based activities)?