Multi-Country Review of World Vision's Unlock Literacy Programme Summary Report

Introduction:

From 2012-2016, World Vision piloted the Unlock Literacy project model, which aims to improve reading outcomes for early grade learners in developing countries. Through implementation in twelve countries (see Figure 1), World Vision gathered rigorous monitoring and evaluation data which is reflected upon and analysed at a cross-country level in this report to answer the question:

• What have we learned about implementing early grade reading programmes for the most vulnerable children?

This summary document presents the conclusions of that analysis and how the findings should be used to inform programming moving forward

Key Findings:

Unlock Literacy has had a substantial impact on reading outcomes.

Unlock Literacy programming defines success as positively impacting reading outcomes. The cross-country analysis examined early grade reading assessment data from ten of the twelve pilot countries and compared observed impact against a World Bank benchmark of 0.25 standard deviations, which are substantively important. This is equal to nearly 4 months of learning in Grade 2, slightly more than 6 months in Grade 3, and nearly 6 months in Grade 4. Seven of the ten pilot programmes had substantive impact, beyond the 0.25 SD benchmark. These findings were generally consistent across reading sub-tests, showing that within a country, impact was observed across reading tasks of varying difficulty level.