Learning Lessons from Positive Cases: Examining Enabling Conditions and Supports for Early-Grade Reading in Nepal

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In the past decade, there has been increasing emphasis on ensuring that education programming and planning aimed at increasing quality in education be based on strong research evidence and guided by data. Impact evaluations provide valuable information to inform policy and planning. At the same time, however, in order to feed back into planning, and ensuring a continued improvement in implementation and outcomes, it is important to also answer questions that are not so easily answered by large-scale, quantitative data collection. These include questions such as: what are the key factors that enabled the intervention to work where it did? what are the factors that kept it from working (or from working as well as anticipated) in other places? what obstacles were encountered and how were they overcome? what are promising practices and local innovations that may lead to more substantial impact in the future or that support sustainability?

Such questions are essential when considering sustainability and “scaling-up” in any context. In a context such as Nepal, where a recent transformation to a decentralized system took place at the same time that the government was beginning to implement its National Early Grade Reading Program (NEGRP), they are vital. This panel will explore research in Nepal that is coupling quantitative data, such as from impact evaluation, EMIS data, and monitoring data, with more in-depth exploration of cases that can help to identify enabling and supportive factors for successful implementation and outcomes. Such information can help national and provincial level policy-makers to provide guidance and aid local-level decision-makers and planners as they endeavor to improve education quality in their localities.

In 2014, the Nepal Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MOEST) developed a national policy/program framework, the National Early Grade Reading Program (NEGRP), aimed at improving the reading achievement of early-grade students throughout Nepal. USAID has supported the government’s efforts to improve early-grade reading under NEGRP through three avenues: Government to Government funding; the Early-Grade Reading Program (EGRP), which is designed to provide technical support for MOEST in the first phase of NEGRP; and Reading for All (R4A), which is designed to provide support for inclusive education and, in particular, to ensure that students with disabilities will also receive the supports necessary to become fluent readers. The focus of these three efforts over the past 5 years has been to provide technical and resource assistance to the Nepal government in order to establish a model for improving reading achievement in 16 districts of Nepal, which can then be rolled out to other districts through Nepal’s multi-donor supported School Sector Development Program. The impact evaluation results showed positive and significant improvement in reading performance, though also indicated that the work to improve learning needs to continue.

The presentations in this panel will share results from the impact evaluation overall and then present findings from mixed method and qualitative field research that provides valuable information as the MOEST continues to roll NEGRP out to more and more districts, as well as to donors – particularly targeting areas that the impact evaluation noted room for improvement. The panel will first begin with a brief overview/introduction to NEGRP, including the initiatives to support the development of the model in the first 16 districts and the MOEST’s plans for rolling out to other districts. Then, in the first research paper, the impact evaluation team will present the endling results of the USAID/EGRP program. The second research paper will then present qualitative research focused on ongoing teacher support. Background will be shared on the Teacher Professional Support (TPS) system, which MOEST developed to ensure that teachers trained under NEGRP can receive the ongoing support necessary to adopt new instructional practices. Then the paper will present research being undertaken to determine the status of the new TPS system and to explore in more depth a small sample of cases where the system, or certain parts of the system, are working particularly well. The third paper will focus on parent/community mobilization, describing the establishment of Tole Reading Groups that was undertaken in the first 6 districts under EGRP. Anecdotal evidence has indicated that, while many of these “TRGS” have not continued functioning since the ending of direct program intervention/funding, a number have. The paper will share the preliminary findings of research looking at the current status of these TRGs and more in-depth exploration of select cases where the groups are still functioning.

Beyond learning specific to Nepal, the panel will provide opportunity to discuss learning from these cases that can contribute to the bodies of research related to ongoing teacher support and parent/community mobilization. Further, the panel will look forward to discussing with the participants about the approach of combining traditional quantitative data with in-depth study of positive examples, local innovation, and response to challenges and the potential for such work to inform planning for sustainability and scale-up.

[Note: This is an updated version of a panel that was accepted last year, but did not take place once the live conference was cancelled]

Sub Unit

• South Asia SIG

Chair

• Narayan Shrestha, RTI International

Individual Presentations

• The impact of NEGRP, findings from an external evaluation - Alicia S. Menendez, University of Chicago & NORC

• Learning from Positive Cases - Teacher Professional Support for EGR in Nepal - Gayatree Timsina, RTI International; Sagar Neupane, RTI International; Wendi Ralaingita, RTI International

• Learning from Positive Cases - Parent and Community Mobilization for EGR in Nepal - Yogendra Gandhari, RTI International

Discussant

• Jodie Fonseca, RTI International