A Comprehensive Framework (working paper)
For the purpose of this work, I will purport that literacy is a holistic measure of both the ability to read, write, and compute numeracy, and also engage and interact with one's environment in a mutually empowering fashion, the ability to maximize one's potential in an advancing environment. But we also need to include other dimensions of literacy, taking into account modern progress in technology, and also traditional cultures; thus, the definition must also include ICT literacy and also alternative literacy in visual/oral means in traditional cultures without written histories. Thus, basic skills, tasks, social practice, and critical reflection.
Literacy's importance lies in the fundamental empowerment of citizens; for economic growth; for health and broader human development indexes; for national cohesion; and for individual dignity and respect. A sound, functional, and output-focused primary school system is the bedrock of literacy promotion at the national-level, represents the largest national footprint, and will be the focus of this report.
No nation has ever witnessed a sustained economic advancement without an overwhelmingly literate population; no mother has gained the ability to decode public health information and follow standardized health guidelines to avoid becoming another statistic of maternal mortality; from the upper echelons of power to the lowest levels of societal engagement, literacy matters.
In approaching the topic of developing a comprehensive framework for those interested in promoting literacy and primary school quality through both formal and informal educational structures, my goal is to present what works, to compile what has been proven cost effective in both promoting literacy and sustaining learning. Simply attending school is simply not enough; in too many nations, students are functionally illiterate after many years of primary and secondary education; thus, the framework incorporates the essential ingredients of strengthening instruction and delivery, as well as more holistic frameworks for educational capacity.
A Comprehensive Framework for Primary School Quality
Health: School Feeding programs/micro-nutrient programs/iodized salt “Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives ... at such low cost and in such a short time.” "Indeed, The Lancet, the British medical journal, reported last month that “Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide.” (Kristof, 2008) Simple solutions to decrease the blockages prohibiting children to work up to their maximum potential. Micronutrient supplements, incorporated as part of a school-meal program, are an essential component of both educational capacity, enrollment, and retention for students. The Midday Meal Scheme in India, exemplified in success by NGO's, such as the Akshaya Patra Foundation, which now feeds over 1.3 million children, has played a critical role for India, and defines a model that can, and should, be duplicated in other developing world nations. The NGO uses both government subsidies as well as private and public donations to create meals in centralized and decentralized kitchens in both rural and urban areas of India, and represents a pioneering model in nutritional fortification for primary school learners in the developing world. The World Food Program pioneered a Food For Education program in over 32 nations, which has worked to feed over one million students; rates of enrollment increase and retention were startling, at around 30%, for both girls and boys. (Gelli and Meir, 2007). Certainly a worthwhile investment.
Transparency: Harnessing information technology and information flows to increase transparency amongst the recipients of public sector educational provision and family/community members is a critical step in increasing both quality and educational outputs. Increasing the amount of money actually getting to teachers will undoubtedly increase teacher quality, as well; one of the biggest blockages in educational delivery is the fact that so much of the educational budgets intended for teacher salaries (in many nations this makes up 90% of the MOE budget) simply do not get to the beneficiaries. Paul Collier states, “...only around 20% of the money that the Ministry of Finance released for primary schools, other than for teacher's salaries, actually reached the schools. In some societies the government would have tried to suppress information like this, but in Uganda, far from suppressing it, Tumusiime-Mutebile used it as a springboard for action. Obviously, one way would have been to tighten the top-down system of audit and scrutiny, but they have already been trying that and it evidently wasn't working too well. So Tumusiime-Mutebile decided to try a completely different approach: scrutiny from the bottom up. Each time the Ministry of Finance released money it informed the local media, and it also sent a poster to each school setting out what it should be getting...Now, instead of only 20% getting through to the schools, 90% was getting through....the media had been decisive-in this case reports in the newspaper. So scrutiny turned 20 percent into 90 percent-more effective than doubling aid and doubling it again.”(The Bottom Billion.
Local Language Literacy:
Literacy itself has had many different definitions over the years which have attempted to encapsulate the full meaning of the word; a final draft of UNESCO, and one that I personally prefer, states that literacy can be defined as "...the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society." (UNESCO 2003) More specifically, local language literacy, in the context of a multi-lingual world, and more specifically, world of multi-lingual nations with national lingua francas, demands attention to this critically underserved issue. Minority and traditionally marginalized populations do not, in many cases, have the benefit of speaking the national tongue of many developing world nations (this is also the case elsewhere, obviously). This leads to further marginalization in the education provision for these groups; attention needs to be paid to developing local language literacy before secondary language literacy can be effective. Thus, there have been very successful, holistic programs, such as Room to Read (Nepal) and Literacy For All (South Africa) that have started to build scalable, replicable models to show exactly how this is possible.
In the case of Literacy for All in South Africa, the model entails dealing with the complex multi-lingualism that exists in the nation in a creative and progressive manner; (I have detailed their efforts in an earlier piece, (http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2011/06/literacy-for-all-cape-town-south-africa.html). They work with specialized, tri-language readers, which have shown great results for students.
In another, more established case that I have worked with personally in Nepal, Room to Read has developed extensive capabilities for publishing quality children's books in local languages in many of the countries in which they operate. These materials are high quality and excellent, and are available in local and dual-languages, and often are donated to schools and school libraries on a needs basis. Again, supporting local language literacy, and building on these literacy skills in secondary language promotion, is a critical element of success that these organizations have implemented in their action plans.
In addition, innovative programs such as Save the Children's Literacy Boost campaign, which works to strengthen public sector educational delivery through teacher training, community involvement, and resource development (through innovative, participative approaches to creating local-language and locally produced readers and educational games) has shown remarkable results in randomized control trials conducted in many nations, such as Malawi, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. While there are questions of governmental ownership and financial sustainability, Literacy Boost has shown that adding more inputs in the equation, through quality teacher training, and additional community mobilization and educational cohesion, can have powerfully multiplying effects on the educational process. A focus on materials and reading outside of school is key to this equation. The lesson that comes through:build on what works. The program showed success in conditions typical in the developing world; classrooms with 100+ students and little learning going on. Conditions which, in normal situations, completely block the educational process for the vast majority of students. This program, and others which mirror its efforts, such as Pratham's Read India Program, have been proven to work.
For the purpose of this work, I will purport that literacy is a holistic measure of both the ability to read, write, and compute numeracy, and also engage and interact with one's environment in a mutually empowering fashion, the ability to maximize one's potential in an advancing environment. But we also need to include other dimensions of literacy, taking into account modern progress in technology, and also traditional cultures; thus, the definition must also include ICT literacy and also alternative literacy in visual/oral means in traditional cultures without written histories. Thus, basic skills, tasks, social practice, and critical reflection.
Literacy's importance lies in the fundamental empowerment of citizens; for economic growth; for health and broader human development indexes; for national cohesion; and for individual dignity and respect. A sound, functional, and output-focused primary school system is the bedrock of literacy promotion at the national-level, represents the largest national footprint, and will be the focus of this report.
No nation has ever witnessed a sustained economic advancement without an overwhelmingly literate population; no mother has gained the ability to decode public health information and follow standardized health guidelines to avoid becoming another statistic of maternal mortality; from the upper echelons of power to the lowest levels of societal engagement, literacy matters.
In approaching the topic of developing a comprehensive framework for those interested in promoting literacy and primary school quality through both formal and informal educational structures, my goal is to present what works, to compile what has been proven cost effective in both promoting literacy and sustaining learning. Simply attending school is simply not enough; in too many nations, students are functionally illiterate after many years of primary and secondary education; thus, the framework incorporates the essential ingredients of strengthening instruction and delivery, as well as more holistic frameworks for educational capacity.
A Comprehensive Framework for Primary School Quality
Health: School Feeding programs/micro-nutrient programs/iodized salt “Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives ... at such low cost and in such a short time.” "Indeed, The Lancet, the British medical journal, reported last month that “Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide.” (Kristof, 2008) Simple solutions to decrease the blockages prohibiting children to work up to their maximum potential. Micronutrient supplements, incorporated as part of a school-meal program, are an essential component of both educational capacity, enrollment, and retention for students. The Midday Meal Scheme in India, exemplified in success by NGO's, such as the Akshaya Patra Foundation, which now feeds over 1.3 million children, has played a critical role for India, and defines a model that can, and should, be duplicated in other developing world nations. The NGO uses both government subsidies as well as private and public donations to create meals in centralized and decentralized kitchens in both rural and urban areas of India, and represents a pioneering model in nutritional fortification for primary school learners in the developing world. The World Food Program pioneered a Food For Education program in over 32 nations, which has worked to feed over one million students; rates of enrollment increase and retention were startling, at around 30%, for both girls and boys. (Gelli and Meir, 2007). Certainly a worthwhile investment.
Transparency: Harnessing information technology and information flows to increase transparency amongst the recipients of public sector educational provision and family/community members is a critical step in increasing both quality and educational outputs. Increasing the amount of money actually getting to teachers will undoubtedly increase teacher quality, as well; one of the biggest blockages in educational delivery is the fact that so much of the educational budgets intended for teacher salaries (in many nations this makes up 90% of the MOE budget) simply do not get to the beneficiaries. Paul Collier states, “...only around 20% of the money that the Ministry of Finance released for primary schools, other than for teacher's salaries, actually reached the schools. In some societies the government would have tried to suppress information like this, but in Uganda, far from suppressing it, Tumusiime-Mutebile used it as a springboard for action. Obviously, one way would have been to tighten the top-down system of audit and scrutiny, but they have already been trying that and it evidently wasn't working too well. So Tumusiime-Mutebile decided to try a completely different approach: scrutiny from the bottom up. Each time the Ministry of Finance released money it informed the local media, and it also sent a poster to each school setting out what it should be getting...Now, instead of only 20% getting through to the schools, 90% was getting through....the media had been decisive-in this case reports in the newspaper. So scrutiny turned 20 percent into 90 percent-more effective than doubling aid and doubling it again.”(The Bottom Billion.
Local Language Literacy:
Literacy itself has had many different definitions over the years which have attempted to encapsulate the full meaning of the word; a final draft of UNESCO, and one that I personally prefer, states that literacy can be defined as "...the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society." (UNESCO 2003) More specifically, local language literacy, in the context of a multi-lingual world, and more specifically, world of multi-lingual nations with national lingua francas, demands attention to this critically underserved issue. Minority and traditionally marginalized populations do not, in many cases, have the benefit of speaking the national tongue of many developing world nations (this is also the case elsewhere, obviously). This leads to further marginalization in the education provision for these groups; attention needs to be paid to developing local language literacy before secondary language literacy can be effective. Thus, there have been very successful, holistic programs, such as Room to Read (Nepal) and Literacy For All (South Africa) that have started to build scalable, replicable models to show exactly how this is possible.
In the case of Literacy for All in South Africa, the model entails dealing with the complex multi-lingualism that exists in the nation in a creative and progressive manner; (I have detailed their efforts in an earlier piece, (http://www.theschoolsproject.org/2011/06/literacy-for-all-cape-town-south-africa.html). They work with specialized, tri-language readers, which have shown great results for students.
In another, more established case that I have worked with personally in Nepal, Room to Read has developed extensive capabilities for publishing quality children's books in local languages in many of the countries in which they operate. These materials are high quality and excellent, and are available in local and dual-languages, and often are donated to schools and school libraries on a needs basis. Again, supporting local language literacy, and building on these literacy skills in secondary language promotion, is a critical element of success that these organizations have implemented in their action plans.
In addition, innovative programs such as Save the Children's Literacy Boost campaign, which works to strengthen public sector educational delivery through teacher training, community involvement, and resource development (through innovative, participative approaches to creating local-language and locally produced readers and educational games) has shown remarkable results in randomized control trials conducted in many nations, such as Malawi, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. While there are questions of governmental ownership and financial sustainability, Literacy Boost has shown that adding more inputs in the equation, through quality teacher training, and additional community mobilization and educational cohesion, can have powerfully multiplying effects on the educational process. A focus on materials and reading outside of school is key to this equation. The lesson that comes through:build on what works. The program showed success in conditions typical in the developing world; classrooms with 100+ students and little learning going on. Conditions which, in normal situations, completely block the educational process for the vast majority of students. This program, and others which mirror its efforts, such as Pratham's Read India Program, have been proven to work.
