IREAD2 Baseline Report: All Children Reading In Ghana
Worldreader
July 2013

Executive Summary

This report outlines findings of the iREAD 2 baseline study, conducted in eight primary schools in Ghana (four control and four treatment schools), in an effort to track the effects of Worldreader’s programs on reading skills in early grade primary school students (P1-P3). The study finds little difference between the treatment and control schools in terms of average student age, gender ratio, and languages spoken at home. However, the treatment sample is nearly 100 students larger than the control, which does lead to some biases.

The treatment and control group scores score comparably on reading comprehension and oral fluency. However, the baseline found differences in EGRA scores between treatment and control groups in the more basic reading skill categories. At this writing of this report, the treatment schools have already begun the program, and as such school selection cannot be changed. However, since our focus will be on comparing how much the two groups improve, relative to each other, we believe that the initial difference in scores can be mitigated.

In addition to carrying out the baseline assessment, there are a number of other important activities going on in treatment schools that should be mentioned, including teacher training workshops and support visits to mentor teachers on phonics-based literacy instructions, the development of “out of classroom experiences” to encourage children to become avid lifetime readers and the establishment of a School Management Committee to oversee and monitor the project.

Read the full IREAD2 Baseline Report: All Children Reading In Ghana.