Quarterly Report READING FOR SUCCESS – SMALL SCALE EXPERIMENTATION (RFS-SSE) Contract No. AID-OAA-I-14-00055 Task Order No. AID-608-TO-15-00002 Year 2 Quarter 1: October – December 2016 Draft Submitted January 20, 2017 Final Submitted January 30, 2017 This report and reflection of achievements are made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.) The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of Chemonics International Inc. and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACRONYMS 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 I. PROJECT OVERVIEW 5 II. ACTIVITY AND ACHIVEMENTS 6 A. Test the effectiveness of a new approach to Arabic reading lessons and the impact on student reading competencies in grades 1 and 2 6 B. Introduce summer reading enrichment activities and test their effectiveness in reducing learning loss among students in grades 1 and 2 9 C. Cross-Cutting Activity: Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) 11 III. MONITORING AND EVALUATION 13 IV. CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNED 16 I. FINANCE, MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION 18 A. Personnel 18 B. Modifications and Amendments 19 A. Financial Information 19 II. PLANNED ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT QUARTER (January– March 2017) 20 ANNEXES 21 Annex 1: Executive Summary in French 21 Annex 2: Teacher’s Toolkit for Reading Success 22 Teacher’s Toolkit for Reading Success 23 Annex 3: Deliverables for the Quarter 24 RFS-SSE: Quarterly Report, October 2016 – December 2016 2 ACRONYMS AREF Regional Academy for Education and Training DOEVS Directorate of Organization and Evaluation of School life CNEE National Center for Evaluation and Examinations CNIP Centre National des Innovations Pédagogiques CRMEF Teacher Training Institute CSO Civil Society Organizations EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment MNEVT Ministry of Education and Vocational Training MSA Modern Standard Arabic RFA Request for Application RFS–SSE Reading for Success — Small Scale Experimentation SSME Snapshot of School Management Effectiveness STS School-to-School International UCFC Central Unit for Teacher Education USAID United States Agency for International Development MEL Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning RFS-SSE: Quarterly Report, October 2016 – December 2016 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY1 The USAID/Morocco Reading for Success – Small Scale Experimentation (RFS-SSE) Project is pleased to present the first quarterly report for Year 2, covering the period of October - December 2016. The project team kick-started Year 2 with an internal ‘Day of Reflection’ on October 6. The purpose of the day was to reflect on the past years achievements and lessons learned. These takeaways were then channeled into a four-day work planning workshop from October 17 – 20. The workshop was collaborative effort to develop the Year work plan, which included the participation of the full project team, as well as the PMU Director from Washington, the USAID COR, as well as local partner Al Jisr. After a preceding year with significant achievements under Result 1, focusing on the production of teaching materials, in the first quarter of Year 2 the RFS-SSE project pivoted to focus on teacher training and support as well as evaluation. The quarter was bookended with a series of trainings, starting with the grade 1 and 2 teachers training in early October in all eight target provinces, and ending with a four-day additional training of trainers at the end of December in Rabat. These additional trainings are a start to a year, which will emphasize this kind of teacher support and training. Although the shift to teacher support has started, this quarter also saw the finalization of the material production. The production and printing of the teacher’s guidebooks (grade 1 and 2) were completed prior to the teacher’s trainings in October, and the development, production, and distribution of 1 The Executive Summary in French has been included as Annex 1 RFS-SSE: Quarterly Report, October 2016 – December 2016 4 student exercise books (semester 1) for both grades and the teacher toolkits for both grades were completed this quarter. The second semester student exercise book is currently under production by national and international experts, and will be distributed during the next quarter. The teacher toolkits were a highlight of the quarter, as this was supplemental to what was originally planned, and based on recommendations from the teacher focus groups in June. (Read Annex 2 - Highlight of the Quarter). In addition to the pedagogical materials within the toolkit, it also contained an interactive platform on a USB key that allows users to access all the training guides, stories, texts and flashcards. This quarter was also paramount to the design and implementation of Result 2, the summer grants program. In December, half-day meetings were held with the school directors in each of the eight provinces. These meetings were vital in terms of introducing the summer program, as well as better understanding how a primary reading grants program would work in each province. These meetings were also a great opportunity to reinforce the already existing collaboration between school directors and the different aspects of the project. I. PROJECT OVERVIEW RFS-SSE is the second phase of a USAID-assisted process that spans from analysis to national implementation of the Reading for Success Program (RFS). RFS comes at a time when the MNEVT is working to implement reforms laid out in a 15-year education reform plan, Vision 2030, which includes a set of medium-term activities for the period 2015-2020. Through RFS-SSE, a new reading approach will be developed and tested, the results of which will feed into the planned MNEVT curriculum reform, so that the interventions are evidence-based and strategic. RFS-SSE is a pilot project designed to work behind the scenes to empower the MNEVT to develop and test the most effective approaches for strengthening children’s Arabic reading skills in targeted primary schools. MNEVT staff at all levels are engaged in the design, training, implementation, and evaluation of the new approach of reading instruction. The program aims to strengthen primary grade reading skills by improving instruction methods, teacher and school capacity, and enrichment opportunities. With a framework that emphasizes experimentation and monitoring, the project is employing new teaching methods, evaluating their impact, and adapting the methods to meet student needs. In its first year, RFS-SSE focused on Result 1 – Developing Arabic Reading Materials for Grades 1 and 2. Based on international best practices and Moroccan expertise, RFS-SSE introduced the phonemic method of teaching, which uses individual syllables and sounds as building blocks for basic reading skills. By learning individual sounds, students learn how to decode and understand letters, words, and phonemes. This is in stark difference to the current method of teaching in Morocco, which is limited to textbooks and the rote memorization of words, rather than children decoding words by sounds. RFS-SSE: Quarterly Report, October 2016 – December 2016 5 To pilot this approach, RFS-SSE worked closely with the MNEVT to select eight provinces in four regions of Morocco that best represented the geographical differences of the country. Within the eight provinces, 90 intervention schools were selected to participate in the pilot. As an experimental project, an integral and cross cutting element of the project is data collection and assessment. Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRA), which provides data on student performance on the most basic skills required for reading fluency, assessing the skills needed to acquire reading, staggered throughout the course of the project reinforce and supplement the project’s qualitative data. II. ACTIVITY AND ACHIVEMENTS A. Test the effectiveness of a new approach to Arabic reading lessons and the impact on student reading competencies in grades 1 and 2 Grade 1 and 2 Teacher Training – At the very beginning of the academic year, from October 10 to 14, 2016, 332 grade 1 and 2 teachers from the 91 intervention2schools in each of the eight target provinces (Inezgane-Aït Melloul, Tiznit, Témara, Kenitra, Oujda-Angad, Figuig, Taouanate and El Hajeb) participated in a 4-day training on the new reading approach. The trained trainers, who were trained in the previous quarter, facilitated the trainings in each of their respective provinces. During the training, each teacher received a copy of the teacher’s guidebook based on their respective grade for teaching (17 teachers received both guidebooks as they have multi-grade classrooms). During the trainings, teachers were divided into two groups based on whether they were trained in the approach for grade 1 or for grade 2. 2 An additional school has been added to the original 90 target schools that are participating to the reading intervention. The additional school was added in the Inzegane delegation prior to the start of the academic school year because two of the teachers that were previously trained last year had been transferred to this new school. Rather than losing these two teachers in the intervention for the upcoming school year, it was decided to include the school into the intervention. RFS-SSE: Quarterly Report, October 2016 – December 2016 6 School directors were invited to attend the first day of the training and were provided with copies of both the teacher guidebooks (grade 1 and 2) for their reference. A training evaluation questionnaire was distributed to the teachers during the last day of the training. Results from the training evaluation are included in the Monitoring and Evaluation section Grade one teachers during the second teacher's training in Inzegane, October 2016 below. Supplemental Teaching Aides - Grade 1 and 2 Student Exercise Book (Semester 1) During this quarter, the first semester of grades 1 and 2 student exercise books were developed by international and local consultants. The student exercise books for each grade correspond with activities for each unit of the first semester per the teacher’s guidebook.