The Literacy Laboratory Project (LLP) under the Northern Uganda Literacy Program

识字是造就见多识广、有技能的公民的基础。但在东非，只有不到三分之一的学生具备基本识字技能。乌干达儿童的表现最差；只有44.5%的儿童通过了基本识字测试。2009年，三角研究所在乌干达北部进行的一项调查显示，早期年级阅读评估(ERRA)数据显示，82%的二年级学生一个当地语言单词都不能读懂，相比之下，中部地区的二年级学生的这一比例为51%。与其他非洲国家类似，乌干达的教育系统也存在许多问题，包括教师培训不足、缺乏教授扫盲的材料和高质量的方法、没有跟踪学生表现的系统，以及家长、社区和地方官员缺乏支持和倡导子女教育的知识。尽管有强有力的母语教育政策，但由于不发达的正字法和缺乏许多语言的材料，成功地实施母语扫盲计划对包括乌干达在内的非洲国家来说是一个巨大的挑战。虽然非洲已经实施了许多教育干预和扫盲计划，但总体上影响很小；随着计划效果的进一步降低，规模化也被证明是个问题。自2010年以来，当地拥有的私营教育工具公司芒果树一直在乌干达北部的一种语言社区试行一个成功的早期扫盲项目。芒果树计划的主要目标包括提高识字率，通过改进有效的教材和教师提高教育质量，并在具有成本效益和可扩展的框架内在学生、家长和社区中培养阅读文化。密歇根大学的研究人员在2013年和2014年对该项目进行的试点随机评估提供了令人信服的证据，证明了干预的巨大好处和成本效益。扫盲实验室项目(LLP)将扩大和评估芒果树扫盲计划，该计划的模式提供更高质量的教师指导、相关扫盲材料的获取、学习者评估的包容性方法、家长和社区在学校的参与以及加强扫盲基础设施，以便阅读和写作，特别是用当地语言进行阅读和写作，成为家庭和社区日常生活中有意义的一部分。这一规模扩大将测试一个试点和改进的模型，以评估其有效性和测试计划交付的模式。根据LLP，密歇根大学的研究人员将在兰戈次区域对该项目进行严格的随机对照试验，为期4年，以衡量教学模式、教师培训和支持监督创新以及扫盲材料和方法在小学一至三年级学生识字成绩方面的有效性，并探索公私合作扩大规模的途径。我们将研究128所学校，这些学校被随机分配到由芒果树的现场官员实施的完全有限责任计划，由政府教师导师实施的部分计划，或控制组。这项研究还将对教材进行随机化，以评估它们对有效教学的贡献。这项研究将收集一组丰富的学生、家长、教师、课堂和学校层面的纵向数据。我们的目标是：1)证明对学习的巨大影响是可能的(正如2013年试点评估结果所指出的那样)；2)表明，通过正确结合培训、教学材料和正确的支持，可以支持教师有效地教授识字--即使在农村、资源不足、过度拥挤的教室；以及3)测试和评估大规模实施的经济方法，以确定对非洲学校学生学习和教师表现的物有所值的影响。

Literacy is the foundation for an informed, skilled citizenry. But in East Africa, less than 1/3 of pupils possess basic literacy skills. Ugandan children perform the worst; only 44.5 percent pass basic literacy tests. Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) data from a Research Triangle Institute survey in northern Uganda in 2009 indicated that 82% of P2 pupils could not read a single word in the local language, compared to 51% of P2 pupils in the central region. Similar to other African countries there are many problems in Uganda's education system, including undertrained teachers, lack of materials and quality methods for teaching literacy, non-existent systems for tracking pupil performance, and parents, communities and local officials that lack the know-how to support and advocate for their children's education. Despite strong mother tongue education policies, due to underdeveloped orthographies and a lack of materials in many languages, implementing successful mother tongue literacy programs poses a significant challenge for African countries, including Uganda. While many educational interventions and literacy programs have been implemented in Africa, impacts have been minimal overall; moving to scale has also proven problematic as program effects reduce further.Since 2010 Mango Tree, a private, locally owned educational tools company, has been piloting a successful early literacy project in one language community in northern Uganda. The main goals of the Mango Tree program include increasing literacy rates, enhancing education quality through improved, effective materials and teachers, and fostering a culture of reading among pupils, parents and communities within a cost-effective and scalable framework. Compelling evidence for the large benefits and cost-effectiveness of the intervention comes from a pilot randomized evaluation of the program conducted by University of Michigan researchers in 2013 and 2014. The Literacy Laboratory Project (LLP) will scale up and evaluate the Mango Tree literacy program, whose model delivers better-quality teacher instruction, access to relevant literacy materials, inclusive approaches to learner assessment, parental and community engagement in schools and strengthening literacy infrastructure so that reading and writing, especially in local languages, becomes a meaningful part of daily life in households and communities. This scale-up will test a piloted and improved model to evaluate its effectiveness and test the mode of program delivery. Under the LLP, researchers from the University of Michigan will conduct a rigorous randomized control trial of the program in the Lango Sub-region over 4 years to measure the effectiveness of the instructional model, teacher training and support supervision innovations and literacy materials and methods on Primary 1- Primary 3 pupils' literacy achievement and explore public-private avenues for scale-up. We will study 128 schools, which are randomly assigned to either the full LLP implemented by Mango Tree's field officers, a partial-program implemented by Government Teacher Tutors, or a control group. The study will also randomize instructional materials to evaluate their contribution to effective teaching. The study will collect a rich set of pupil, parent, teacher, classroom, and school-level longitudinal data. Learning will be measured principally in terms of improvements in EGRA and Early Grade Writing Assessment scores.Our goals are to: 1) demonstrate that big effects on learning are possible (as the 2013 pilot evaluation results point toward); 2) show that with the right combination of training, teaching and learning materials and correct support, teachers can be supported to effectively teach literacy - even in rural, under-resourced, overcrowded classrooms; and 3) to test and evaluate economic approaches to implementation at scale to determine value-for-money impacts on pupil learning and teacher performance in African schools.