Literacy Boost Nacala, Mozambique Baseline Report April 2014

This report serves to summarize a baseline analysis of children’s average literacy skills in Save the Children’s Sponsorship area in Nacala, Mozambique. Over 700 grade 3 students from 36 different schools were given a basic literacy test and background questionnaire in February 2014. Half of the schools in the sample will begin Save the Children’s Literacy Boost program this year, and the other half will begin the program in 2015. Therefore, this data will be used to finalize teacher training and community action interventions for the launch of the Literacy Boost program in Nacala, and will also serve as a baseline measure against which to measure students’ learning progress.

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

1. How comparable are learners in Literacy Boost schools versus comparison schools in terms of reading skills, background characteristics, and home literacy environment?
2. What can the baseline tell us about learners’ emergent reading skills? What does this mean for Literacy Boost programming?
3. How do learners’ reading skills vary by student background, and home literacy environment? What does this mean for targeting Literacy Boost’s two strands of intervention?