Empowering decentralized transformations: Improving foundational literacy and Numeracy through Teaching at the Right Level in Brazil

• In Event: Learning innovations developed by the Global South: "Catch up" programs in Brazil, Côte d'Ivoire, and Senegal

Proposal

Many children across the world face a common crisis: They graduate from primary school without acquiring the basics of literacy and numeracy. There are extrapolations that school closures during the pandemic may have exacerbated this crisis. In Brazil, where schools were closed for an average of 287.4 days (or 9.5 months), addressing the learning gap has become a pressing concern.
Responding to this issue, Instituto Gesto, an initiative by Lemann Foundation, approached Pratham for technical assistance in adapting TaRL to the Brazilian context. Since 2021, supported by its implementing partner, Elos Educacional, Instituto Gesto has sought to implement the approach in multiple poor-performing states and municipalities — leveraging the country’s decentralized public education system to help children “catch up” in a short period of time. As of January 2023, these interventions have reached ~100 schools and over 2000 learners. The delivery of this program has led to improvements of over 30 percentage points in the proportion of children who can read phrases and solve subtraction at the end of the program.

The adaption of TaRL to Brazil’s decentralized education system has been a unique experience. For instance, education departments of states or municipalities have autonomy in delivering primary education. Thus, TaRL interventions have been piloted independently in different geographies within Brazil and have been contextualized to suit local needs and realities. Although these models of delivery have differed, the core principles of the TaRL approach have been uniform across contexts.
Furthermore, the decentralized nature of the projects in Brazil allowed Gesto and Elos to build capacity on TaRL in a phase-wise manner. In the initial phase, which lasted approximately 49 hours of implementation time in Portuguese and 49 hours in Math, Elos and Gesto played a more significant role in supporting the program's implementation. Efforts were made to introduce the intervention to local government officials and gradually integrate them into the pilot's delivery. As the program progresses into phase 2 in 2024, the focus will shift towards a government-led model, aiming to capitalize on government actors' involvement to undertake key mentoring and monitoring responsibilities. This transition is a significant step towards sustainable and scalable impact in advancing foundational literacy and numeracy across Brazil.
This presentation aims to showcase the valuable lessons learned from the strengths and challenges encountered while implementing the accelerated TaRL approach within Brazil's decentralized education system. The presentation will also shed light on the practices adopted to ensure consistent improvements in children's learning outcomes as the interventions continue to expand across the country.

Author

• Fernanda Patriota Salles Ribeiro, Motriz