South Sudan Teacher Education Program (SSTEP) Early Grade Reading Assessment Report

As a result, nearly 85% of the population cannot read or write, and education is the top priority for the people of South Sudan. The quality of teaching and learning is severely compromised by factors such as limited professional development opportunities for teachers, a shortage of qualified teachers, challenging working conditions, and an incomplete professional development curriculum. The South Sudan Education Program (SSTEP) aimed to address these challenges by providing high-quality training to 2,000 South Sudanese in-service teachers using the revised Unified Curriculum training system. The program focused on improving teachers' skills in teaching literacy and numeracy, with a specific emphasis on the teaching of reading through a holistic approach. SSTEP also developed teaching and learning materials to support teacher training and classroom instruction, with a focus on literacy, and provided training to improve teachers' English language proficiency. However, due to the outbreak of violence in South Sudan in 2013, USAID decided to terminate SSTEP, along with other USG-funded projects, in early 2014. As a result, the program did not have the opportunity to fully implement its intervention. The original evaluation design included three cross-sectional assessments to measure changes in student reading skills attributable to the project activities. Only the baseline assessment was conducted before the project's termination. The baseline assessment was conducted in July 2013, and it involved assessing 504 second-grade students from four states in South Sudan: Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei, and Lakes. The assessment was implemented in English by trained data collectors, and it measured students' literacy level, as well as their socio-economic background, home literacy support, and school quality. The assessment found that nearly all students performed poorly in literacy subtests, with girls and students from Central and Eastern Equatoria performing particularly poorly. The assessment also found that most students could recognize the English alphabet but struggled to identify the sounds those letters make. Additionally, students lacked the vocabulary to understand grade-level text, and their reading and listening comprehension subtests showed poor performance. However, students performed relatively well in the dictation subtest, demonstrating some familiarity with the conventions of written text and the ability to spell at least one word correctly. The assessment also found a positive correlation between the dictation subtest results and school quality and socio-economic background. This suggests that targeted programming to improve both home and school literacy support will be essential to ensure learning gains among South Sudanese children. The assessment's findings highlight the need for a comprehensive approach to improving literacy in South Sudan, including the development of targeted programming to support both home and school literacy.