World Vision Nepal Literacy Boost Baseline Report Kailali East & Chisapani ADPs May 2015

This report summarizes the key findings and results of a Literacy Boost (LB) student background survey and reading assessment conducted in January and February 2015.

The results of the student background survey show only half of the students speak Nepali at home despite 83% of surveyed teachers reporting Nepali as the only language used for classroom instruction. The majority of students (78%) attended some form of Early Childhood Development programming (ECD), while 25% repeated grade 1 and 12% have repeated grade 2. Most students come from households with at least one person who can read, at least one person who encourages the student to study, and at least one person who reads to the child, but fewer students come from households with members who tell stories to them. Even when household members read or tell stories to students, the readers do not as often ask the students questions about the story.

In terms of reading skills, students across the ADPs perform poorly foundational reading skills, and only 19% of students can read and understand connected text. A major focus of LB should be helping teachers, community members, and parents to build students’ foundational Nepali reading skills.

Finally, in terms of equity analysis, students whose mother tongue is not Nepali are at the greatest disadvantage. A multivariate regression analysis controlling for key equity variables shows students who speak Nepali score significantly higher on 4 of the 5 reading sub-tests. Other possible causes of inequity were assessed, however no significant differences were found in reading results, suggesting that those students who do not speak Nepali should be the focus of targeted interventions to raise them to the reading level of their Nepali speaking peers.