Briefing on Sept 17 Workshop on Grade 3 Reading

The workshop was prepared by Luis A. Crouch of RTI International, as part of the USAID EdData II project. Egypt prioritizes reading, with the President, Minister, and Education Sector Strategic Plan all emphasizing its importance. The Ministry of Education (MoE) and USAID started the Early Grade Reading program in 2009, with a pilot that showed vast improvements in reading fluency scores and a halving of non-readers. The program was scaled up nationally, with the MoE continuing to train teachers, print materials, and set benchmarks. Reading was declared the most important education goal by the President and is also the most important goal in the Sector Strategic Plan. The Early Grade Reading program consisted of assessment, piloting, scale-up, and components such as teacher training, direct instruction, lesson plans, and materials development. The program was implemented in Grades 1 and 2 in 2011 and Grade 3 in 2013. Some key indicative results from 2013 and 2014 showed that 20% of kids met 2018 benchmarks for Letter Sound Knowledge, 4% for Nonword Decoding, 12% for Oral Reading Fluency, and 5% for Reading Comprehension. Regional differences in reading performance were observed, with three regions showing similar results and two regions performing lower. Process indicators from a classroom observation study showed that 92% of teachers had received some training on teaching Grade 3 reading, and 75% of those who had received mastery monitoring training were applying it. The issues and areas for improvement identified included the need for more time to apply training, with only four useful weeks in the whole school year in 2014 due to political turmoil. Teachers were also found to be "stuck" with Grade 1 and 2 skills, needing to focus on fluency and comprehension. The line-up of curriculum, assessment, reading materials, and training was not as good for Grade 3 as for Grades 1 and 2 under the pilot. Ways to intensify the quality of teacher coaching models should be found, and the quality of improvement varies a lot, with a need to bring up the average by supporting Middle and Upper Egypt more.