Ethiopia is home to the Luminos Fund’s longest-standing and most advanced government partnership to date. Through years of support and advocacy from Luminos, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has embraced accelerated learning as a national strategy to reach out-of-school children and is adopting the Luminos program model in government schools across the country.
During the 2023-24 school year, in partnership with the Sidama Regional Education Bureau (REB), Luminos piloted a structured pedagogy approach in 40 government adoption classrooms in two districts of Sidama, Bona and Teticha, reaching 1,500 out-of-school children.
An external evaluation found that using structured pedagogy in government adoption classrooms led to an extraordinary impact on children’s literacy and numeracy learning outcomes. One month before the end of the 10-month program, students could read 32 correct words per minute (CWPM), an improvement of +28 CWPM over baseline, and their reading comprehension scores increased by 48 percentage points.
For comparison, students in the government adoption classrooms with structured pedagogy were able to read more than four times as many CWPM as Grade 2 Sidaamu Afoo speakers in conventional schools in Sidama, who read only 7 CWPM, according to the 2021 national Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) in Ethiopia. In addition, 27% of students in the government adoption classes with structured pedagogy were able to read more than 45 CWPM at endline, an increase from 1% at baseline. In contrast, the 2023 national EGRA in Ethiopia found that only 4% of Grade 2 students in conventional classrooms in Sidama were able to read more than 45 CWPM.
One month before the end of the 10-month program, students could read 32 correct words per minute (CWPM), an improvement of +28 CWPM over baseline, and their reading comprehension scores increased by 48 percentage points.
Our latest report, “Government Adoption with Structured Pedagogy in Ethiopia,” summarizes the 2023-24 endline evaluation conducted by BEES Devlytics.
Evaluation Overview
The external evaluation aimed to demonstrate the impact of structured pedagogy on student literacy and numeracy outcomes during the 10-month 2023-24 school year. An Ethiopian firm, BEES Devlytics, used the RTI/USAID-developed Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and Early Grade Math Assessment (EGMA) instruments, translated into the Sidaamu Afoo language. The sample size at baseline was between 7-10 students selected from each of the 40 pilot project classes in the two districts of Bona and Teticha (final baseline sample size: n=397, 50% girls). At endline, a total of 359 students were assessed (47% girls). Endline data collection was conducted one month before the end of the school year to avoid conflict with planned regional exams. For more details on the evaluation and methods used, please see the full report summary.
In pilot classrooms, government teachers received daily lesson plans that prescribed topics and core learning objectives for each lesson of the day. (Photo by Michael Stulman/Luminos Fund)
Overall Results
The results of the evaluation show that the Luminos pilot using structured pedagogy in government-adoption classrooms positively impacted student achievement in both reading and math.
Literacy
On reading, students made significant gains from baseline to endline across every EGRA subtask, including an average improvement of +52 percentage points on letter identification, +43 percentage points on familiar words, +44 percentage points on oral reading fluency (ORF), and +48 percentage points on reading comprehension. On the ORF subtask, students could read 32 correct words per minute (CWPM) at endline, an improvement of +28 CWPM over baseline. At the same time, the percentage of students receiving zero scores on subtasks – those unable to answer any items correctly – dropped dramatically. At endline, the percentage of students unable to read any words correctly on the Grade 2-level ORF subtask declined from 78% to only 8%, while the percentage of students unable to answer any comprehension questions about the passage declined from 88% to 15%. Please see Table 1 and Figure 1 below for more detail.
Table 1: 2023-24 Structured Pedagogy Reading Results
Figure 1: Percent Correct Scores for Reading Subtasks
Numeracy
Students in classrooms with structured pedagogy also made significant gains in math, including an average improvement of +63 percentage points on number identification, +61 percentage points on number discrimination, +52 percentage points on addition Level 1, and +43 percentage points on subtraction Level 1. This increase in average scores was accompanied by a pronounced decrease in the percentage of students scoring zero on each subtask. For example, at endline, only 2% of students were not able to answer any addition Level 1 questions (down from 53% of students at baseline) and 6% of students received a zero score on subtraction Level 1 (down from 68% at baseline). These EGMA results are particularly notable as 30% of instructional time in structured pedagogy pilot classes is dedicated to numeracy compared to 50% of time to literacy. Please see Table 2 and Figure 2 below for more detail.
Table 2: Luminos Ethiopia 2023-24 2023-24 Structured Pedagogy Math Results
Figure 2: Percent Correct Scores for Math Subtasks
Comparison to Government Adoption Classes Without Structured Pedagogy
For comparison, students from 34 government adoption classes in Sidama, which did not use structured pedagogy, were assessed at baseline (sample size: n=358) and endline (sample size: n=282), using the same EGRA/EGMA instruments. Students in the classes with structured pedagogy outperformed their peers who were in the classes without structured pedagogy on all EGRA and EGMA subtasks.
After the same number of overall learning hours, students in classrooms with structured pedagogy were able to read more than four times as many words in a passage per minute as students without structured pedagogy (at endline, students in the classes with structured pedagogy read 32 CWPM with only 8% zero scores while students in government adoption classes without structured pedagogy read 7 CWPM with 61% zero scores). On EGMA, students with structured pedagogy could identify twice as many numbers per minute, solve nearly twice as many addition Level 1 problems per minute, and solve twice as many subtraction Level 1 problems per minute as government adoption classes without structured pedagogy.
Luminos classrooms are inclusive, joyful, and activity-based, with a focus on making learning fun and empowering for all students. (Photo by Michael Stulman/Luminos Fund)
Conclusion
Results from the 2023-24 Luminos structured pedagogy pilot in Sidama show that the program had a significant positive impact on student reading and math outcomes across all EGRA and EGMA subtasks. One month before the end of the 10-month program, students in the 40 pilot classes could read 32 CWPM, an improvement of +28 CWPM over baseline. In addition to improvements in reading fluency, students made gains in reading comprehension, improving by +48 percentage points on the reading comprehension subtask.
Students in the government adoption classrooms with structured pedagogy were able to read more than four times as many CWPM as Grade 2 Sidaamu Afoo speakers in conventional schools in Sidama, who read only 7 CWPM, according to the 2021 national Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) in Ethiopia. In addition, 27% of students in the government adoption classes with structured pedagogy were able to read more than 45 CWPM at endline, an increase from 1% at baseline. In contrast, the 2023 national EGRA in Ethiopia found that only 4% of Grade 2 students in conventional classrooms in Sidama were able to read more than 45 CWPM.
Results from the 2023-24 Luminos structured pedagogy pilot in Sidama show that the program had a significant positive impact on student reading and math outcomes across all EGRA and EGMA subtasks. One month before the end of the 10-month program, students in the 40 pilot classes could read 32 CWPM, an improvement of +28 CWPM over baseline.
To read the full report summary, including additional background on our Ethiopia government adoption program and a more detailed overview of the evaluation and methods used, click here.
