Submitted by Justin Prud’homme
In 2008, at the start of the Early Grade Reading Assessment program, a study was conducted in Liberia to assess the reading fluency of students in grades 2 and 3. The study was conducted in 47 randomly chosen schools throughout the country.
What the study showed was that Liberian students in Grade 2, on average, read 18 correct words per minute and students in Grade 3 read an average of 28 words per minute. By contrast, a student in the US in Grade 2 is usually able to read about 90 words per minute, and a third Grader about 110 words per minute.
Clearly something in Liberian schools needed to change.
USAID’s EGRA program, in conjunction with Ministry of Education efforts, aimed to improve the quality of the primary education on offer in Liberian schools by focusing on improving early grade reading. EGRA employed a variety of best practices culled from around the world, ranging from simple interventions like increasing reading time in schools and increasing the number of textbooks and other reading materials available to the students, to more complex interventions such as providing teachers with training, supervision, and year-long lesson plans, and community participation and mobilization. The video seen below is one of the tools used to educate communities on the value of learning to read, and engage them in encouraging their students.
In addition EGRA employed a rigorous and scientific assessment method to determine the success of their methods relative to previously chosen ‘control’ schools. While final assessment results of the program success are still being compiled, an assessment done just four months after interventions began showed that students benefiting from the EGRA program outperformed students in control schools, in reading, by 50%. Following the announcement of the final results it is hoped that the EGRA methods will be adopted by the Ministry of Education on a nation-wide scale.
