Scaling-up Early Grade Reading Assessment through Civil Society Organisations: The case of Uwezo in East Africa.

• In Event: Scaling up early grade reading interventions in Uganda

Proposal

Uwezo, whose name means capability in Swahili, is an initiative of Twaweza East Africa, whose main function since 2009 has been to assess and report on children’s acquisition of basic skills of literacy and numeracy across hundreds of thousands of households in Kenya Tanzania and Uganda. Uwezo has used the approach and methodology pioneered by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in India, in which trained citizen-volunteers conduct reading and numeracy assessments and obtain other relevant data in the household setting, from large, nation-wide samples of children. To mobilise volunteers, Uwezo collaborates with a large number of district based local organisations that broadly represent civil society.

The skills regularly assessed by Uwezo are basic elements of reading, arithmetic and everyday problem solving that are supposed to have been mastered by the end of Primary 2 and are a necessary foundation for subsequent learning. Children aged 6-16 are assessed, but particular attention is given in analysis to the learning outcomes of those attending Primary Grade 3 and above. This provides evidence about what the education systems are actually able to deliver or what children are able to learn after curriculum delivery.

The Uwezo assessment findings are reported systematically both at national and district/county levels, in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Immediately after the literacy and numeracy assessments, instant feedback is also provided to the selected households and communities.

In the national and district reports, performance at easily understood levels of literacy and numeracy is reported. Variations in performance according to a variety of characteristics of individuals, households, schooling and geographical location are also considered. In 2017, Uwezo also carried out a pilot study, applying its assessment of basic reading and arithmetic skills to children in Uganda’s refugee settlements, comparing their learning outcomes with those of non-refugee children in the same districts. The pilot provided evidence of how we can quantitatively assess early grade reading at scale in emergency contexts.

This paper provides insights into ‘the how’ and ‘the what’ of scaling up early grade reading assessments from a civil society perspective. We draw from experiences and data collected by Uwezo in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda (https://www.twaweza.org/go/uwezo-datasets) in implementing a large-scale citizen-led reading assessment programme. The paper argues that Uwezo’s experiences and those of other citizen Led Assessment (CLA) programs united under the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) network (http://palnetwork.org/) provide useful case studies of the role of civil society in taking literacy and numeracy interventions to scale. We further argue for a deliberate strengthening of such independent citizen-driven assessments as part of a global effort to monitor and enhance the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 4 on Education and also as a pathway for realising education for sustainability.

Authors

• Faridah Nassereka, Uwezo Uganda

• Mary Goretti Nakabugo, Twaweza East Africa