Research Studies and Reports

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Browsing Research Studies and Reports by Subject "Child assessment"

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    Yizani Sifunde: An effective approach to closing the early literacy gap
    (Liberty Community Trust, Wordworks, Book Dash and Nal'ibali, 2024) von Blottnitz, Magali
    This is the third in a series of learning briefs that explore the design, implementation and impact of Yizani Sifunde, a collaborative multi-pronged intervention designed to boost early literacy outcomes in 4- and 5-year-olds. This brief summarises the quantitative evidence on how the Yizani Sifunde project effectively closed gaps in early learning, with a focus on early language and literacy. Specifically, the brief: * reviews available evidence about the South African early literacy gaps, particularly in rural provinces and among speakers of African languages, and describes the methodology followed by the evaluators * compares the ELOM assessment results achieved by project children at baseline and endline, against the provincial average * isolates the part of the children's learning gains corresponding to programme effect, after correcting for the expected maturation effect * summarises the findings from regression analyses on contributors, mediators and moderators of the learning gains. Key findings are that within 8 months of the intervention, the children have achieved remarkable improvement in their ELOM scores, including in domains that were not targeted by the intervention, such as numeracy. After correcting for maturation, the children on average gained 3 to 6 extra months of learning, and the most vulnerable children gained up to 13 months of learning in addition to the expected 8 months of maturation. Importantly, these positive results hold irrespective of context factors such as class size or presence of other interventions in the ECD centre. An improvement in the children's task orientation appears to have been a key contributor to the learning gains. The number of books received, and owned by the child, was a significant predictor of the endline achievement. These findings confirm the value of the intervention design, including the provision of books to be owned by the children.