Reading is the Future: Lekti se Lavni: Baseline – Endline Assessments Report

Save the Children International (SCI) has been promoting children’s right to education in Haiti since 1978. SCI’s early reading program is designed to support kindergarten through second grade children to learn to read in their maternal tongue. In order to gather evidence on the efficacy of this approach, a review of results to date versus program baselines was conducted.

This report examines the results of two learner reading assessments: a baseline conducted in Haiti in October 2012, the beginning of the school year, followed by an endline conducted in June 2013 at the end of the school year. The baseline reading assessment covered 1,028 learners throughout 36 SCI Haiti program schools in Leogane and Port-au-Prince (18 schools each), both communes of West department in Haiti. The endline reading assessment in June involved the same supported school population enrolled in the ‘Reading is the Future’ program, with an additional comparison sample of 240 students from 16 selected control schools, 8 in Leogane and 8 in Port-au-Prince.

The Reading is the Future Program, Lekti se Lavni in Creole, includes teacher training, community reading activities, and the creation of age-appropriate local language material to support emergent literacy skills among early-grade children (kindergarten to second grade).