Impact evaluation for the USAID/Aprender a ler project in Mozambique : year 1 (midline) IE/RCT report

To address this concern, the Ministry of Education (MINED) and USAID/Mozambique decided to collaboratively implement an intervention project, USAID/Aprender a Ler (ApaL), to improve reading skills in the early grades. ApaL is conceptualized as an evidence-based reading instruction program coupled with an impact evaluation (IE) designed to estimate the impact of ApaL on reading outcomes as measured by the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). This is the second of four reports that comprise the Impact Evaluation of the ApaL project. The IE is designed as a randomized controlled trial and uses a counterfactual -- e.g., a control group similar to the treatment groups -- to estimate what would have happened without the intervention. The main objective of this report is to compare results obtained by students in full and medium treatment groups to those in control schools that did not have the benefit of ApaL and to attempt to answer the question of what would likely have happened without the benefit of the project. In addition, the report compares scores obtained at midline and at baseline and discusses the relationships between specific variables such and sex, province, location of the school and characteristics of students, teachers, directors and classrooms that could affect student performance on the early grade reading assessment (EGRA). In spite of the abbreviated implementation of ApaL in 2013, it appears that the project has the potential to improve student reading skills as shown by the comparisons between control and treatment groups at midline (see Tables 1 and 2). Major impacts are observed in second grade in letter recognition and familiar word reading. Third grade pattern is not as clear although letter recognition is significantly improved in Zambezia. The benefits accrued by the students in full and medium groups are summarized in detailed analysis in this impact evaluation report. (Excerpt, modified)