Liberating Students Through Locally Led Efforts to Improve Early Grade Reading - Lessons from Nigeria

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Theme: The Power of Protest
Sub-theme 4: Pedagogies and Protest

Liberating Students Through Locally Led Efforts to Improve Early Grade Reading - Lessons from Nigeria
Authors: Scott Frick (Chair), Nurudeen Lawal, Saheed Salawu, Rebecca Stone [Creative Associates], Toun Akinsolu [Cambridge Education].

Abstract
"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army."
– Edward Everett

Early grade reading creates a foundation upon which an individual can seek wider information toward empowerment. In Nigeria, a staggering 70% of children in schools cannot read and write by age 10 (World Bank), with recent studies indicating that there is a threat of losing hard-won gains in recent years due to COVID-era pauses and sustained investment systemic challenges. USAID Leveraging Education Assistance Resources in Nigeria (LEARN) to Read is working directly in the space between policy and practice, providing crucial technical assistance to government agencies who are prioritizing early grade reading as a necessary means to an empowered population.

This paper will examine progress towards changing the narratives and implementing a nation-wide mother-tongue reading framework, challenges and opportunities toward better practice, and the role of systemic assessment in understanding progress. The paper begins by exploring the extent to which policies have been put in place, with focus on the liberating intent behind such policies and process. It will then consider the difficult link with practice—including priorities on funding—necessary for intentional policies to become transformational practice. The panel will thus investigate the empowering elements of structure, process and implementation of the policies, practice, assessment and accountability systems of a national reading program.

Policies (Professor Toun Akinsolu)
In May 2023 the Minister of Education formally launched the National Reading Framework (NRF). The framework is the culmination of years of collaboration between the Ministry, USAID and its implementing partners. The framework is aligned to the Global Proficiency Framework for Reading towards achieving and ensuring that Nigerian pupils are assessed using the same standards as their counterparts from around the world. It also outlines a series of commitments to improving reading systems through enhanced, policy, guidance, practice and oversight. The Learn to Read activity has been working with the federal institutions to co-create a practical and realistic actions plans that can help deliver on these policy commitments. Given that policy commitments often cut across different federal institutions (inter agency), a NRF Coordination Committee has been constituted to help facilitate greater partnership and understanding across these institutions. Alongside supporting planning to deliver on the commitments, the Learn to Read team is facilitating a co-creation process for the development of implementation monitoring processes, to ensure federal institutions can track progress, provide more targeted support and seek accountability from states for more effective EGR education service delivery. Learn to Read is also working with UBEC to develop innovative, results-based incentives within the domestic financing landscape to encourage progress against target commitments. We will consider how these policies are empowering actors in the system, with presentation of early gains.

Practice (Dr. Saheed Salawu)
Teacher capacity development, leveraging parental support for teaching and learning, and teaching and learning materials (TLM) provision are typical approaches to improve learners' reading skills in their mother tongue in lower primary grades. Teacher Professional Development (TPD) is fundamentally an empowering practice. The capacity of School Support Officers (SSOs) is developed to train teachers in teaching in effective reading practice. Structural challenges, including funding for SSOs to reach teachers and support them to improve the teaching of reading, leave many teachers to their own devices. Despite continuous donor support in Nigeria, most approaches are not sustained and increases in learner reading proficiency are temporary (or entirely elusive).
To tackle this challenge, the USAID funded Learn to Read Activity in Nigeria developed a different strategy while maintaining the approach that has been tested and validated in other countries. The project uses a locally driven sequence of activities to ensure that teachers can develop their capacity working within their contexts in schools and clusters of schools. Our locally driven approach to improve teacher competency includes state funding for data-driving planning and targeted teacher support. Crucially, it also includes connections with community/parents who are part of EGR accountability and advocacy for sustained resource investment. We will present the empowering elements of our TPD approach and consider what changes are in place to meet challenges.

Assessment & Accountability (Nurudeen Lawal)
The Nigeria LEARN project seeks to co-create with the Nigerian government a comprehensive assessment system for early grade reading; including formative and summative learner assessments, teacher performance assessments, school-level assessments, and lot-quality assurance assessments at the local government level. The project also aims to “open up” assessment data to community members through School Performance Report Cards (SPRCs) to increase accountability. The project works through a Nigerian-led National Assessment Technical Working Committee to co-create assessment procedures in a series of co-creation activities which culminated in a National assessment Summit. The team is preparing for a pilot of the assessment procedures in selected states. As more and more early grade reading projects try this systems-strengthening approach focused on empowering the system, this paper will share valuable lessons learned and discuss empowering elements of the proposed assessment types.

Bridging Policy and Practice – The Link Between Intention and Empowerment (Dr. Rebecca Stone)
Policies, practice and assessment are key technical components of LEARN’s systems strengthening approach. Ideally, these work together to create a functional, learning and improving system that serves the early readers well as the start to lifelong learning and productive, happy, and self-determined citizenship. A functioning system is easier spoken about than realized, however, and this summative portion of the paper will discuss unique challenges in bridging policies and practice, including a bleeding-edge overview of LEARN’s collaborative approach to addressing major systemic practice challenges.

Sub Unit

• Global Literacy SIG

Chairs

• Ossom Mmah OSSOM, Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC

• Leesa Kaplan, Creative Associates International

Individual Presentations

• Bridging Policy and Practice – The Link Between Intention and Empowerment - Rebecca Jewell Stone, Creative Associates International

• Liberating Students Through Locally Led Efforts to Improve Early Grade Reading - Lessons from Nigeria - Policies - Leesa Kaplan, Creative Associates International

Discussant

• Mahmuda Galadima, Crearive Associates International