Great Expectations: Reflections on reading results achieved to date and prospects for “All Children Reading” in a post-2015 world (Part 2 of 2)

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

With the Millennium Development Goals set to expire at the end of 2015, the global education community is hard at work developing the next set of global goals and indicators. While the process has been fraught with challenges, there is increasing momentum for the inclusion of a learning goal for primary education. Some proposals have gone so far as to highlight reading improvement as a possible single area of focus, with possible indicators including the percentage of students reading by the end of 3rd grade or the end of primary school. While the global debates have centered on selecting the best goals, indicators and metrics for monitoring learning (and reading in particular) there has been little discussion about what level of improvement can be expected, at what scale and under what conditions. Whether under the auspices of a donor-supported project or NGO effort in a small number of schools or through direct government intervention at national scale, programs vary widely in their level of intensity, investment per student and operating conditions. These conditions necessarily influence the outcomes and results we see and can expect to see under a new set of global goals.
This panel brings together several experiences from small- and large-scale reading improvement programs in an effort to inform (and perhaps temper) expectations surrounding how quickly and easily the needle on reading performance has been (and can be) moved. Results from programs in several countries will be shared, along with considerations such as dosage, duration and the enabling environment under which the programs were implemented. The panel will begin with an overarching conceptual framework and model for presentation of program results, followed by four presentations documenting country and project experiences, largely from sub-Saharan Africa. Each presenter will follow the framework laid out by the panel chair, allowing for easier interpretation and analysis by the audience.
Based on our experiences, and in response to the 2015 CIES Call for Proposals, this panel will offer collective and forward-looking commentary and deliberations on what we can expect to see in terms of gains and progress made against a still hypothetical set of goals centered on improving early reading. We believe the best opportunity for making sustained, significant gains in learning improvement, for all children, requires great, but informed, expectations (and we suspect this lies somewhere between cautious optimism and unbridled enthusiasm). We make the case for informed debate, based on experiences to date as well as well as flexibility in the measurement and tracking of the global indicators, whatever their eventual form. We expect this panel (and the paper we hope to produce in time for the conference) will provide useful and valuable information for those constructing the goals that will guide our work in the coming decades.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Global Literacy

Chair

• Peggy McCardle, Peggy McCardle Consulting, LLC

Individual Presentations

• Reading results from the Philippines, Rwanda and Senegal - Rachel Christina, Education Development Center

• Reading results from Mozambique - Haiyan Hua, World Education

• Reading results from Guatemala and Jamaica - Fernando Ernesto Rubio, Juarez and Associates, Inc; Jean Beaumont, Juarez and Associates