Name of Prime Offeror: Florida State University
Name of Contracting Entity/Government Agency: UNICEF - Nigeria
Period of Performance: 11/10/2018 - 8/30/2019
Scope of Work: FSU/LSI provided technical assistance to UNICEF to promote early grade reading in northeast Nigeria using Kanuri -the mother tongue of the region. The FSU/LSI team co-developed the Kanuri Arithmetic and Reading Intervention (KARI) curricula for pupils in grades 1 – 3, with local university faculty and school teachers from Borno and Yobe states. The curricula consisted of Student Books and Teacher Guides for the three grade levels. FSU/LSI piloted the KARI curricula in selected public primary and integrated Quranic schools in Borno and Yobe states. For this, FSU/LSI trained Kanuri-native speakers with strong education background stakeholders who built the capacity of school teachers. Also, the team developed the first EGRA and EGMA in Kanuri language. FSU/LSI provided Kanuri and Hausa language teaching and learning materials for pupils and teachers, as well as training and ongoing school-level mentoring support in both languages to teachers. FSU conducted a Randomized Control Trial to determine causal evidence of the effects of the KARI intervention.
COMPLETE Final Report Submitted to The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF -Nigeria)
Executive Summary
From January to August of 2019, a team of literacy specialists, educators and monitoring and evaluation experts from the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University provided technical assistance to UNICEF to promote early grade reading in northeast Nigeria. The specific goal was to support UNICEF in the piloting of the Kanuri version of the Reading and Numeracy Activity (RANA) for pupils in grades 1 – 3 in selected public primary and integrated Quranic schools in Borno and Yobe states. In addition, the team was to provide Kanuri language teaching and learning materials for pupils and teachers as well as training and ongoing school level mentoring support in both languages to teachers.
The team was composed of Dr. Ana H. Marty, Associate in Research at the Learning System Institute and Early Learning and Development Specialist and Dr. Adrienne E. Barnes, Literacy and Pedagogy Specialist. Also part of the team were Dr. Helen Boyle, former Assistant Professor at FSU and current Director of Program Strategy for the International Development Division at Education Development Center and Dr. Stephanie Zuilkowski, Associate Professor at FSU and Monitoring and Evaluation expert.
The main activities for this project can be grouped in three main categories:
1. Curriculum development
a. Development of scope and sequence for Kanuri curricula
b. Adaptation/translation to Kanuri of the Reading and Numeracy Activity (RANA) for pupils in grades 1 – 3
c. Validation of Kanuri curricular package
2. Capacity Building
a. Training of MTs and teachers on the Kanuri curricular materials and methodology
b. Training of MTs, QAOs and HTs on the Mentoring and Monitoring methodology
c. Training of assessors on data collection tools
3. Randomized Control Trial
a. Ten-week implementation of the Term 1 P2 Kanuri curricular package
b. Twenty out of 38 schools implementing KARI
c. Three monitoring and mentoring visits to teachers implementing KARI
d. Administration of EGRA, EGMA and Interview protocol at the end of the 10-week of implementation
It was projected to collect data on 760 P2 pupils yet complete EGRA and EGMA data was collected on 711 children distributed between 18 control and 20 implementation schools. Although no statistically significant differences were found between the intervention and control group at the end of the pilot study, several interesting variances deserve attention:
1. The intervention group performed slightly higher in the Letter-sound ID and Syllable ID subtasks of the EGRA.
2. Boys performed slightly better than girls in all the subtasks except Listening Comprehension.
3. The intervention group performed slightly higher in the Number ID, Number Discrimination, Addition and Subtraction (Level 1) subtasks of the EGMA.
4. Boys performed slightly better than the girls in all the subtasks of the EGMA.
Some of the challenges the FSU team faced during this consultancy were related to the Holidays and election-related activities, which significantly impacted the timeline of all activities. Unfortunately, the implementation of the KARI curricula was the RCT component most affected as only seven of 10 planned weeks of instruction took place. In addition, a travel ban by the U.S. Embassy in Abuja paused all travel of the FSU team to Maiduguri during an important period of training and materials development. However, our small team was successful in completing the scope of work, developing a high-quality curricular package and handing all the deliverables agreed on the contract.
Based on the experiences of this consultancy, the FSU team recommends implementing the KARI curriculum for a full year with three data collection windows: baseline, midline, and endline assessments (EGRA, EGMA and curriculum-based measures). This full-year implementation should include a strong mentoring and monitoring component of the curriculum to better support the teachers. The numeracy component should be expanded to include three lessons per week with shorter read aloud stories in order to provide a solid foundation of numeracy instruction for the pupils. Another recommendation is to increase the MT and Data Collection teams by including more COE instructors and COE upper level or graduate students, respectively. Finally, we suggest considering the creation of professional learning communities (PLCs) at the school and LGEA levels in order to provide teachers with continuous professional development and direct training on evidence-based reading instructional practices.
This report provides a detail account of all the activities implemented during this 8-month consultancy as well as the results of the Randomized Control Trial. In addition, the successes, lessons learned, challenges and recommendations are presented. It is important to highlight that the newly developed and validated teaching and learning materials in Kanuri was named Kari Arithmetic and Reading Intervention (KARI). The FSU team is submitting this report to DFID and UNICEF-Nigeria and welcomes feedback and suggestions for making this report and the findings and recommendations wherein more useful for improving the literacy outcomes of the children of Borno and Yobe States.