PEPAS Literacy Boost Pakistan Endline Report January 2014

Analyses performed after one year of implementation of Save the Children’s Literacy Boost program through the Program for Establishing Partnership and Stability (PEPAS) in the Battagram District of Pakistan find that reading skill gains were generally larger for Literacy Boost students compared to control students, but differences were not statistically significant. This could be due to the small sample size or large variation within the data. In addition, community reading activities were launched in full only three months before data collection, making it possible that higher scores could be achieved if the community component had been in practice for a longer time before endline data collection.

At endline, Literacy Boost students had statistically significantly more types of books at home, and more often reported seeing someone at home read or having someone read to them than comparison students. However, almost half of Literacy Boost students still do not have storybooks at home, and one-third reported not having some on at home reading to them. Both child-friendly reading materials and home-based activities like reading with children are proven to be effective for improving early literacy skills, and should continue to be the focus on programming in Pakistan.

Girls had significantly weaker baseline literacy skills than boys in all areas except Pashto reading comprehension. However, by endline girls caught up with boys on all skills. While it is encouraging to see girls catching up with boys on numerous skills, there are no differences between the skill gains of girls in Literacy Boost schools compared to their peers in non-intervention schools. More investigation should be done to determine why girls in Literacy Boost are not progressing at a fast rate than girls in comparison schools.