LITERACY BOOST

What is innovative about Literacy Boost strategies?

Save the Children believes that more children will learn to read with comprehension if they

are well supported to do so in their classrooms and outside of school. Literacy Boost combines teacher training coupled with the materials and opportunities to practice reading skills in a daily life. The program helps teachers, learners, parents and community members in assisting children with the skills they need for independent reading. The initiative places community members at the center of education of their children, since children spend approximately 20 hours at home.

This means that parents have a major role in the learning process of their children. Parents and other community members have been able to take advantage of established reading camps in each and every feeder village of the targeted schools. Through reading camps, the initiative has helped bring books closer to villages where these learners come from. It has also helped generate the interest of learners in interacting with print.

It is strongly believed that this will lead to the development of a reading culture among learners, especially those from hard to reach areas. In these areas the only books available within households in most cases is either The Bible or Quran.

Save the Children is the world’s leading development and humanitarian agen-

cy for children, with over 95 years of experience in health and nutrition, food security and livelihoods, education, protection, and HIV and AIDS as well as in emergency humanitarian response. Save the Children has operated in Malawi since 1983 working directly or through partners in all 28 districts. In 2012 Save the Children’s programmes reached over 5.2 million people, 35% of the population of Malawi.

Save the ChildrenNgerengere House, Off Mchinji Road,

P.O. Box 30374Lilongwe, Malawi

Tel: +265 1 762667malawi@savethechildren.org

How does it influence policy?

Since 2012, Save the Children has collabo-rated with other like-minded organisations in coordinating national level conferences with an aim of influencing policy change. Save the Children has also collaborated with Ministry of Education officials, especially those from the Department of Inspectorate

and Advisory Services. Through mon-itoring the Literacy Boost activities,

they have appreciated the impact of the intervention.

How does the innovation fit into our Theory of Change?

Literacy Boost fits Save the Children’s Theory of Change in a number of ways. The program is practicing Innovation by virtue of its innovative approach that uses evidence-based solutions. It is Building Partnerships by working with Ministry of Education and World Vision International. The program is Achieving Results at Scale with plans to reach more schools in 2014. In being the Voice the program collaborates with decision-making bodies such as Technical Working Groups at both National and District level and represents the voice of children at these forums in advocating for the advancement of the Literacy Boost agenda.

What evidence is there for making lasting change in the lives of children?

There have been significant gains in the children’s reading abilities since the initiative started. According to Save the Children’s 2012/13 end line studies, 80% of the teach-ers supervised were using the skills they acquired. There has also been active participation of students in the learning process. For ex-ample, across all sub-skills, the proportion of learners who improved their skills ranged between 50% and 70% according to a study by the Centre for Education Research and Training (CERT) of the University of Malawi.

What is Literacy Boost?

Literacy Boost is Save the Children’s response to an alarming global trend – the rise in number of children finishing primary school who are unable to fully read and write.

Essence & Focus of the program

The program aims at helping young children in grades one to four develop reading skills in and out of school. It focuses on their core five reading skills, letter knowledge, reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Key Strategies

Save the Children designed a three-pronged approach that includes:

1. Use of Assessments to identify gaps and measure improvements in the five core reading skills

2. Training of Teachers to teach national curriculum with an emphasis on core reading skills

3. Community Action through community mobi-lization to support children’s reading, encouraging children to read as much as possible.

What future plans do we have for scaling up?

Save the Children plans to scale up Literacy Boost with 18 new schools within Zomba. In 2014,

the Sponsorship Program will be phasing into Balaka district. Literacy Boost is one

of the key focus areas among Basic Education initiatives that will be implemented. In addition, Literacy Boost has been incorporated into the Martin

Devenish Project as its main focus between 2014 and 2016.

LITERACY BOOST