Early Grade Reading reforms in Nigeria: Streamlining efforts to achieving equitable learning outcomes

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

There is increasing evidence that being able to read from an early age is a crucial predictor of later academic success. Studies across Africa show that a very small percentage of students in the early grades learn sufficiently the foundations for reading and are able to sufficiently comprehend what they read (RTI, 2012).

In a UNICEF study into ‘concepts of print’ in 5 states in northern Nigeria, Johnson, and Hsieh (2011) found that when students were observed handling a book presented to them upside down and the wrong way round, under 40% were able to correctly orientate the book, show the front of the book, or the back of the book. Fewer than 30% of children could turn to a specific page number when asked (i.e., turn to page 3), and fewer than 20% were able to respond when asked to ‘turn to the next page’ or to ‘turn to the first page’. The results suggest that basic concepts such as ‘first’ and ‘last’, ‘before’ and ‘after’, ‘up’ and ‘down’, and so on, that are perhaps the most important predictors for success across subjects like mathematics, science, and language in the later years of schooling, are ill formed in the early years.

EGRA studies in Nigeria (RTI, 2013) show that a significant proportion of children in the Nigerian school system are unable to relate sounds to letters, or identify letters, or read simple everyday recurring words, even in Hausa.

Nigeria has second to lowest percentage amongst seven sub-Saharan African countries in Grade Four students reading competencies . According to Bold et al (2017) these seven sub- Saharan Africa countries showed serious issues with literacy with 40 percent (approximately) of fourth-grade students not able to read a single letter, 70 percent not able to read a sentence, and 90 percent (approximately) not able to read a paragraph. The students are failing and so schools are failing. The situation is exacerbated by equity issues around gender and economic status. Nigeria is thus faced with a learning crisis as many children are not able read and write at the end of primary school education .

Notably, what is common across all studies is that the performance of girls is generally poorer than that of boys and that there are sharp variances in performance between states. But also significant, is that the emphasis on how learning, and opportunities to learn might be improved for all is not always coherent across government departments and international partners. Critically, to build opportunities and secure equality of outcomes for all, across states and communities where variances are high, needs a strong coherent central systems’ steer (World Bank 2012).

This panel will thus look through a systems lens at the efforts of the government of Nigeria and Development Partners, to institutionalize and improve reading outcomes for all Nigerian children.

A major convergence of the country’s reading efforts is the development of National Reading Framework (NRF) led by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in partnership with cognate agencies and active supervision of the Federal Ministry of Education. And Nigeria was able to pilot a policy linking activity, using the Angoff method to determine reading benchmark.

Major questions addressed by the four panels on the Nigeria reading reform, includes: What factors influenced the objectives, approaches, and trends of the reading reforms? What are the determinants of the scope and implementation status? What were the emerging issues and their resolutions? What are the gains and the resulting implications? Where is the reform headed with respect to national institutionalization and international representations?

The first panel titled Language Matters in Early Grade Reading Reforms will set the pace by looking into existing national education policy documents and the various language of instruction provisions and their implementation status. This includes the place of history, politics, culture, environment, media, communication & religions in the policy crafting and implementation status. The paper will discuss the various efforts of the government of Nigeria to establish a reading reform agenda with support of Development Partners; the successes, challenges and where the reform is headed. The second panel will focus on lessons from developing a National Reading Framework (NRF) for the Country including a National Evaluation Framework for Reading (NEF-R) based on the Global Proficiency Framework for Reading (GPFR). Highlighted lessons will cover how the development process navigated consensus building, language issues including orthographies (in a country with up to five hundred languages) and stakeholder management.

The third paper will focus on the Nigeria policy-linking process to establish international comparability for reading performance across languages. The policy linking is an off shoot of the establishment of the GPFR and answers the question of linking the scores of different reading assessments to a common scale. The paper will look at the approach, stakeholder engagement, capacity building and institutionalization and scaleup opportunities. Lastly, the fourth panel will wrap up the discussion on how the NRF document has influenced Teaching and Learning Material development and the potential for curriculum change. The commitments in the NRF are far reaching, and we will discuss their implementation strategies for a sustainable reform. The USAID Leading Through Learning Global Platform with Creative Associates International will pull evidence and experience from over 15 years of programming by the Nigeria government, USAID and the World Bank with other Development Partners, in foundational literacy and early grade reading in Nigeria to draw out these lessons using data from multiple education programs.

Sub Unit

• Global Literacy SIG

Chair

• David Johnson, University of Oxford

Individual Presentations

• Language matters in Early Grade Reading reforms - Nurudeen Lawal, Creative Associates International

• Lessons from developing a multilingual National Reading Framework - Lydia Onuoha Ezihe Onuoha, Creative Associates International; Garba Gandu, Creative Associates International/Nigerian Educational Research & Dev Council

• Policy Linking and the setting of Early Grade Reading standards and benchmarks: The Nigeria experience - Wale Samuel, EDC; Lydia Onuoha Ezihe Onuoha, Creative Associates International

Discussant

• Rebecca Stone, Creative Associates International