How evidence is informing solutions to South Africa’s early grade reading crisis
Context
In South Africa, 78 per cent of children in fourth grade cannot read for meaning. Scholars have attributed the reading crisis to apartheid-era policies of vastly unequal and lower-standard schooling systems for a majority of people. They emphasise the vicious cycle of factors that lead to deficient reading, which then contribute to poor learning outcomes. These factors include insufficiently trained teaching cadres focusing on pronunciation and rote memorisation, deficient provincial educational budgets, lack of reading materials at school and home, and challenges facing predominantly poor and illiterate parents.
Although the government prioritised improving reading, there was little evidence regarding which early grade reading interventions worked. In the past, many governmental, non-governmental and academic programmes in different parts of South Africa had implemented diverse interventions to improve these skills. Most of these programmes either had short durations or did not include evaluations of what specifically worked about them, including for whom, how or why they worked. Against this backdrop, demand grew for evidence of the effectiveness of early reading programmes.
Responding to this demand, researchers affiliated with the national Department of Basic Education, the Human Sciences Research Council, the University of Witwatersrand and Georgetown University designed an evaluation to find the best approach to improving reading skills, which they named the EGRS.
The researchers piloted three approaches to improve reading outcomes in a set of early grade classrooms in two districts of North West province. They piloted high-quality Setswana readers and structured lesson plans for teachers of grades 1 and 2, combined with either centralised teacher training or on-site teacher coaching. The third approach they piloted was community-based support to increase parental involvement in children’s literacy. The EGRS sought to identify the most cost-effective of the three approaches to improve home-language reading skills in the early grades.
Evidence
The evaluation found that the on-site coaching approach had larger and statistically significant effects on more dimensions of home-language reading ability than the centralised training or parental involvement approaches. Students of teachers who received on-site coaching were approximately five months of learning ahead of the students in control schools across all measured dimensions of home-language reading proficiency.
Although on-site teacher coaching also had a positive effect on English literacy, the training approach had a significant positive effect on only three dimensions of home-language reading ability: recognition of sounds, recognition of non-words and paragraph reading. The parental involvement approach had to grapple with low parental attendance and had small, statistically insignificant effects.
Larger effect sizes were detected among boys, schools in urban townships, larger schools and communities with higher socio-economic status. Middle-ranked and above-average students in the classes and large classes benefitted the most. However, even initially weak students benefitted as long as they were exposed to two years of the coaching intervention. None of the approaches had a negative effect on the acquisition of home-language reading skills or on the learning of other subjects.
Evidence impacts
Type of impact: Improve the culture of evidence use
When decision makers or implementers demonstrate positive attitudinal changes towards evidence use or towards information the research team provides. Examples include strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems, increasing understanding of evidence and openness to using it, integrating these systems more firmly into programming or commissioning another evaluation or review.
This is one of 3ie’s seven types of evidence use. Impact types are based on what we find in the monitoring data for an evaluation or review. Due to the nature of evidence-informed decision-making and action, 3ie looks for verifiable contributions that our evidence makes, not attribution.
Read our complete evidence impact typology and verification approach here.
Close windowInformed by the evidence from the 3ie-supported EGRS, USAID came on board to fund a follow-up evaluation of the teacher training and coaching approaches. The EGRS II evaluation compared two mechanisms to provide expert coaching to teachers in Mpumalanga province. The first mechanism included tablet-based lesson plans for English as first additional language, graded readers and virtual coaching of teachers. The second used the EGRS model of on-site coaches who visit teachers and compared them with virtual coaches who support teachers through calls and messages.
Type of impact: Inform the design of other programmes
Where findings from the evaluation or review inform the design of a programme(s) other than the one(s) evaluated.
This is one of 3ie’s seven types of evidence use. Impact types are based on what we find in the monitoring data for an evaluation or review. Due to the nature of evidence-informed decision-making and action, 3ie looks for verifiable contributions that our evidence makes, not attribution.
Read our complete evidence impact typology and verification approach here.
Close windowFindings also led USAID to change its Reading Support Project to implement and evaluate a longer duration of the structured learning programme, with centralised training and on-site coaching, in North West province. The parental involvement approach was discontinued due to the insignificant effects found in the EGRS evaluation.
‘The department’s early grade reading studies have demonstrated the impact that a dedicated package of reading resources, expert reading coaches and lesson plans can have on reading outcomes. We will be substantially expanding the availability of these early reading resources across the foundation phase of schooling.’
Type of impact: Inform discussions of policies and programmes
When subsequent phases of the evaluated programme or policy draw from the findings of the evaluation or review, and/or the study team participates in informing the design of a subsequent phase.
This is one of 3ie’s seven types of evidence use. Impact types are based on what we find in the monitoring data for an evaluation or review. Due to the nature of evidence-informed decision-making and action, 3ie looks for verifiable contributions that our evidence makes, not attribution.
Read our complete evidence impact typology and verification approach here.
Close windowThe president and the Department of Basic Education both announced, on multiple occasions, the government’s plan to implement the EGRS package of reading resources, lesson plans and expert coaches to improve reading comprehension in the foundation phase over the next five years. The government developed an implementation plan, informed by the 3ie-funded evaluation’s findings, that involves multiple stakeholders, including steering committee members inside and outside the government.
Suggested citation
International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), 2020. How evidence is informing solutions to South Africa’s early grade reading crisis [online summary], Evidence Impact Summaries. New Delhi: 3ie.
Evidence impact summaries aim to demonstrate and encourage the use of evidence to inform programming and policymaking. These reflect the information available to 3ie at the time of posting. Since several factors influence policymaking, the summaries highlight contributions of evidence rather than endorsing a policy or decision or claiming that it can be attributed solely to evidence. If you have any suggestions or updates to improve this summary, please write to influence@3ieimpact.org
Last updated on 11th November 2020