Literacy Boost Dendi, Ethiopia: Baseline II 2012

In 2010, Save the Children began implementing the Literacy Boost program – an intervention focused on working with teachers and communities to improve children’s reading skills – in Oromia Region, Dendi District of Ethiopia.

The Literacy Boost assessment features emergent literacy and early grade reading assessments used to detail the skills present when Literacy Boost begins and to chart progress throughout the intervention. These data are also used to adapt the intervention’s teacher training and community activities. The data presented in this report represent the second round of baseline data collection, collected at the start of the school 2011-2012 school year in Dende. At each of the 20 schools where data was collected, a target of 20 children in the third grade was sampled. The complete sample included 390 students (5 students were missing from each of two comparison schools).

This study analyzes any possible differences in learning between Literacy Boost and comparison students at the start of Grade 3 in the 2011-2012 school year. It is important to note that this is the second round of baseline data collection. Students in Literacy Boost schools have been exposed, as second graders (and possibly repeating 3rd graders) to 36 weeks of the Literacy Boost intervention in the first part of the calendar year. Reading Buddies were established 34 weeks prior to this 2nd baseline assessment, while Book Banks were in place for 27 weeks. The findings in this report must be interpreted in light of this previous exposure to Literacy Boost programming.