Literacy & School Feeding in Sierra Leone

• In Event: Hungry Minds: Evaluation of School Feeding and Literacy Interventions

Proposal

Funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) McGovern-Dole Food for Education program, the All Pikin for Learn project (APFL) strives to reduce hunger and improve literacy and primary education in Sierra Leone. APFL provides nutritional support to communities in Sierra Leone’s Koinadugu and Falaba districts through nutritious meals at intervention schools each school day, as well as take-home rations to pupils who demonstrate high academic performance and to teachers who support APFL’s after-school activities, such as health and reading clubs. In March 2020, the project adapted its activities to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, including distributing take-home rations and solar-powered radios to pupils, as well as building handwashing stations with appropriate training in how to use them.
This midline performance evaluation is a key tool for the program funder and other development partners to understand what progress Phase IV of the APFL (APFL IV) program has made, especially during a tumultuous year due to the global pandemic. Partners within the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) used the results to inform their national policies, programs, and practices. At the community level, results around pupils’ performance were used in discussions with the school management committees (SMCs), community teacher associations (CTAs), mothers support groups (MSGs), and parents to reinforce the need for community support around pupils’ education and reading.
The evaluation responds to five evaluation questions to gauge the project’s progress against its indicators—relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact. This study compares changes with results from the APFL IV baseline and reviews how the APFL IV’s theory of change has held up.
Utilizing mixed methods, the non-experimental midline performance evaluation measures the project’s progress toward meeting its performance indicators. Data were collected from a clustered sample of the 310 APFL IV intervention schools in June 2021 using a literacy assessment, surveys, observation tools, and qualitative interviews and focus group discussions. Diverse groups of stakeholders were included to provide broad perspectives for the project, including pupils, teachers, head teachers, SMC chairpersons, CTA chairpersons, school food preparers, the heads of the MSGs, community members, and staff from government partners as well as community members.
Midline results show that the majority of pupils still cannot read and understand the meaning of grade-level text. Overall, of the 678 pupils assessed at midline, 91.3 percent did not correctly answer at least four reading comprehension questions, as shown in the figure below. However, comprehension has improved since baseline, where only 5.6 percent met the threshold. Fewer girls (7.4 percent) met the threshold at midline than boys (10.0 percent), mirroring the trend at baseline of more boys (7.8 percent) meeting the threshold than girls (3.1 percent).
Despite the finding regarding reading, there were increases in knowledge and behaviors around infant and young child feeding (ICYF), health and hygiene, and safe food preparation practices. In addition, there was statistically significant improvement in school infrastructure, distribution of medication, and the proportion of pupils who were not hungry during the school day.

Authors

• Melanie Phillips, School to School International

• Candace Debnam, School-to-School International