literacy boost philippines: mindanao baseline report 2012

Literacy Boost Baseline Report

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Literacy Boost Philippines:

Mindanao Baseline Report

December 2012

Jarret Guajardo, Bonna Duron, Cecilia Ochoa, and Amy Jo

Dowd

With special thanks to Save the Children staff, Philippines Department of

Education Divisions of South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat, and our team of

enumerators:

Anwar Adam, Agustina Bandalan, Lovelyn Bandalan, Marilyn Bandalan, Junaiba Bantugan,

Reynante Denal, Ercelia Diaz, Joehali Dimagel, Rosalia Dimalao, Jean Garrote, Shaydee

Guiamadin, Bainot Guiapal, Mylen Juarez, Merlyne Kagi, Asnia Kudalat, Ma. Clarisza

Leonida, Maureen Love Kulan, Kaye Marie Kulan, Juditha Mhek, and Armida Rajah

Buayan


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Executive Summary

This report examines the results of a reading assessment conducted between September 12th and

October 26th, 2012 as part of Save the Children’s (SC)’s Literacy Boost program. The Literacy Boost

program includes teacher training, community reading activities, and age-appropriate local language

material creation to support emergent literacy skills among early-grade children. The survey and

reading assessment covered 551 grade 1 students and 568 grade 2 students throughout 29 schools in

the Bagumbayan and Lutayan districts of Sultan Kudarat Province and the T’boli and Lake Sebu districts

of South Cotabato Province; all located in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. The sample of

schools is split into 15 intervention schools set to receive Literacy Boost and 14 comparison schools

not scheduled to receive the Literacy Boost intervention for at least one year.

The literacy skills tested in this assessment include concepts about print (CAP), letter knowledge,

single word reading of most used words (MUW), words read correctly per minute of a grade-level

passage (fluency), total words read correctly of the grade-level passage (accuracy), reading

comprehension, and listening comprehension. Overall, inter-rater reliability was good, meaning that

assessors generally consistently evaluated children’s performance on these sub-tests. However, it

appears that different T’boli assessors had very little consistency in the manner they assessed children.

Thus, a high level of caution should be employed when interpreting the T’boli results, and

at endline more care must be taken to train all assessors more thoroughly on inter-rater

reliability to ensure consistent data gathering.

Descriptive Statistics

The sample as a whole is comprised of students about seven to eight years in age who come from a

household of three to four other family members on average. The linguistic composition of students is mixed within many of the schools. In terms of school characteristics, only one-third of schools have a

school management committee (SMC). Schools infrastructure is not always fully developed, and 52% of

assessed classrooms lack a legible blackboard and a full 73% of schools do not have a library.

In terms of home literacy environment (HLE), the majority of students have textbooks in their home,

but few other types of reading materials. While most household members encouraged students to

study, little more than half were seen reading, read to the student, told a story to the student, or

played a game with the student. Less than half sang a song to the student. While reading to students

requires literate household members, the remaining activities of telling stories, singing, and playing

games do not require literacy. Given these findings, Literacy Boost programming should:

accommodate the diversity of different language speakers in schools, ensuring that all

teacher training content, community action activities, and any print materials

developed are equally relevant to the different linguistic groups

provide posters and other instructional and visual aids as well as helping teachers construct their own materials for a print-rich classroom environment in which

teachers have legible assets from which to teach students

establish Book Banks where children can borrow a variety of engaging, skill level-

appropriate print

offer material creation and community activities that allow all students access to storybooks, coloring books, newspapers, magazines, etc


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provide household members, especially parents, with information about the value of

telling stories, singing, and playing games with their children and suggestions for how

to do so via the Community Strategies for Enhancing Literacy flipbook and parental

awareness workshops

Comparability between Intervention and Comparison Students

Intervention and comparison samples differed in a few different ways. The following differences

between samples should be controlled for during endline analysis:

all Literacy Boost intervention schools receive other basic education, school health &

nutrition, disaster risk reduction, and child protection interventions; however nine of

the comparison schools receive less school health & nutrition interventions and none of

the other interventions

intervention schools appear more likely to have infrastructural advantages over

comparison schools as well as more ventilation, play equipment, and SMCs

intervention students may be slightly more likely to have more types of reading

materials at home

Literacy Assessment: Foundational skills

For the entire sample, grade 1 students correctly answered only about one third of concepts about

print questions and grade 2 students could answer only just under half of these questions. Both grade 1

and 2 students exhibit large deficiencies in letter knowledge, as grade 1 students could identify only

40% of letters on average and grade 2 students 64% on average. It appears that overall, grade 1

students perform very poorly on all their letters and struggled the most with consonants such as G, T,

Y, H, W, D, and especially NG. The most difficult letters for grade 2 children were uppercase and

lowercase J, Q, NG, and Ñ. Likely strongly linked to this deficiency are students’ low scores on the

most-used words sub-test, where grade 1 students could read only 18% of words and grade 2 students

could read only 46% of words. Over two-thirds of grade 1 students and one third of grade 2 students

could not correctly read even one most-used-word. Given these findings, Literacy Boost should:

increase students’ access to print through materials creation, Book Banks, Reading Buddies, and Reading Camps involving activities where students can actually practice

handling books, especially storybooks, themselves and to learn from the example of

experienced readers

build on children’s existing letter knowledge and address the largely unknown letters

focus on letters and phonological awareness through the teacher training, community action, and material creation such as alphabet posters and make-and-take letters

give teachers the training and tools to help students apply their knowledge of letters

and phonics to build their decoding skills. This should be reinforced through Reading

Camp activities that emphasize practicing letters and reading basic words

Literacy Assessment: Students unable to read connected text (nonreaders)

Due to this lack of foundational skills, results of the reading passage sub-test identify a full 96% of grade

1 students and 67% of grade 2 students as nonreaders (unable to read at least five words correctly in

30 seconds). For these students, the assessor read the passage and then asked students the reading comprehension questions to estimate students’ ‘listening comprehension,’ an indicator of skills such as

oral vocabulary, listening ability, attention, etc. The nonreaders scored very poorly on listening


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comprehension (39% of comprehension questions correctly answered by grade 1 students and 21% by

grade 2 students), suggesting underdevelopment of these skills. In general, a stark divergence between

readers and nonreaders exists across a variety of skills, especially reading of most-used words and

connected text. Given these findings, Literacy Boost should:

encourage teachers, Reading Camp facilitators, and parents to read or tell more stories to students in class, during Reading Camps, or at home

encourage family and community members to engage students in conversation, active

listening, and other listening comprehension activities throughout the day as

suggested by the Community Strategies for Enhancing Literacy flipbook

provide for more exposure to spoken Filipino through activities such as story time

bridge the gap between readers and nonreaders through activities like Reading

Buddies. The much higher reading skills of readers represent a valuable asset to draw

on in terms of example and ability to help their non-reading peers practice their

listening and read-along skills

Literacy Assessment: Students able to read connected text (readers)

The number of grade 1 readers was too small for useful analysis, but among grade 2 Filipino readers,

students exhibited reading speeds of about 37 words correct per minute and read an average of 85% of

the text correctly. However, readers’ reading comprehension scores barely exceed one quarter of

reading comprehension questions correctly answered, suggesting that students may lack a sufficient

command of Filipino language skills (especially vocabulary), speed, or both in order to understand the

text from which they are able to read the vast majority of words. Students barely performed better at

answering literal comprehension questions, and within the types of ‘deep’ comprehension questions,

students struggled the most with inferential questions, followed by the evaluative question, and

generally were able to answer the summary question as often as they were able to correctly answer

the literal comprehension questions. Given these findings, Literacy Boost should:

help give students more engaging opportunities and materials to practice their Filipino vocabulary and other oral language skills as well as to practice reading Filipino texts in

order to increase their fluency and ultimately their reading comprehension

train teachers and community activity facilitators to engage in active reading with

students; including prompting students to predict, discuss, reflect, evaluate, etc. during

story time inside and outside the classroom whether the students are reading or being

read to

train teachers and community volunteers to engage students in active listening and deeper engagement with reading texts to stimulate the development of students’

ability to summarize, infer, and evaluate what they hear to prepare the students to

‘read to learn’ versus merely ‘learning to read’

Multilevel Regression Analysis

Testing the relationship between students’ background, school characteristics, and HLE against literacy

scores revealed a number of findings. First, children performed significantly better in many sub-tests

when tested in their mother tongue. This is further evidence for the importance of mother

tongue instruction as students learn their most foundational skills. Children with larger

families consistently scored lower on a variety of sub-tests, as did children who reported a large chore


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or work load. In addition, children who reported eating breakfast the morning of the assessment had

significantly higher literacy scores than those who reported not eating breakfast. One of the most

consistent positive relationships between school-level variables and literacy scores was the existence of

an SMC. A high number of teacher transfers was negatively associated with literacy scores. Finally, in

terms of children’s home literacy environment (HLE) the variety of print available in students’

households and children’s reports of having read to family or community members in the past week

were significantly associated with higher literacy scores. Given these findings, Literacy Boost

programming should:

ensure that all children can receive equal attention, time, and exposure to reading through community activities

consider prioritizing those children from larger families should be prioritized to be

paired with experienced readers if resources and experienced readers are limited for

Reading Buddies

carefully schedule community activities such that all students can conveniently attend even if they have large work or chore loads

educate parents and family members about the importance of study time while

suggesting strategies for integrating literacy-development activities into work and

chores, such as singing

Save the Children programming in basic education and school health and nutrition should remind parents about the importance of ensuring their children eat a nutritious

breakfast to be better prepared to learn throughout the day

use the findings about SMCs as evidence to advocate for the creation of additional

SMCs where there are none to see if this additional level of support from parents leads

to higher reading skills development

look to the SMCs an important target of capacity building efforts that will enable them to assume responsibility for community activities to promote enhanced sustainability

of the program

where possible, train all primary teachers within a school to ensure that students’

exposure to Literacy Boost enhanced instruction of the five reading skills is not

interrupted by teacher transfer

enhance children’s access to a variety of types of print through Book Banks and materials creation

encourage children to develop their reading habits outside of school by providing level-

appropriate and enjoyable reading materials through Book Banks and materials

creation as well as structured opportunities to read through Reading Camps, Reading

Buddies, and Read-a-Thons


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Introduction

This report examines the results of a student background survey and reading assessment conducted

between September 12th and October 26th, 2012 as part of Save the Children’s (SC)’s Literacy Boost

program. The Literacy Boost program includes teacher training, community reading activities, and age-

appropriate local language material creation to support emergent literacy skills among early-grade

children.

The survey and reading assessment covered 551 grade 1 students and 568 grade 2 students throughout

29 schools in the Bagumbayan and Lutayan districts of Sultan Kudarat Province and the T’boli and Lake

Sebu districts of South Cotabato Province; all located in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao.

The sample of schools is split into 15 intervention schools set to receive Literacy Boost and 14

comparison schools not scheduled to receive the Literacy Boost intervention for at least one year.

The literacy skills tested in this assessment include concepts about print (CAP), letter knowledge,

single word reading of most used words (MUW), words read correctly per minute of a grade-level

passage (fluency), total words read correctly of the grade-level passage (accuracy), reading

comprehension, and listening comprehension. As part of Literacy Boost, students are periodically

assessed in each of these skills through an adaptable assessment tool to inform programming and

estimate program impact. The data gathered from these sections is analyzed to present a snapshot of

the emergent literacy skills of grade 2 students in the Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato schools

where SC will implement Literacy Boost, and to inform the adaptation of the Literacy Boost program

to this context.

The key research questions to be explored in this report include the following:

1. How comparable are students in intervention and comparison schools in terms of student

reading skills, background characteristics, and community literacy environment (CLE)?

2. What can the baseline tell us about students’ reading skills? What does this mean for Literacy

Boost programming?

3. How do students’ reading skills vary by student background, school characteristics, and

community literacy environment? What does this mean for targeting Literacy Boost’s various

intervention components?

To investigate these questions, this report will first describe the research methods used; including

sampling, measurement, and analysis. Next, in order to see if groups are statistically similar, the

comparability of intervention, comparison, and Sponsorship student backgrounds, school

characteristics, and community literacy environment will be examined through clustered t-tests. The

report will then investigate students’ scores for each of the literacy skills, analyzing students’ strengths

and weaknesses in each skill. Finally, the report will investigate the dynamics between sex, literacy

skills, and other variables as well as correlations with student background or community literacy

environment variables using multilevel regression analysis.


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Context

The rural districts of Bagumbayan, Lutayan, T’boli, and Lake Sebu are located in the southwestern part

of the southern Philippines island of Mindanao. The population of these areas is ethnically

heterogeneous, and various groups speak Ilonggo, T’boli, Maguindanaoan, Bisaya/Cebuano, Ilokano, and Tagalog1 as their mother tongue. The economy in the rural inland areas in which the sample of schools

in this report can be found is based primarily on agriculture, fishing, and cottage industries. As such, the

population served by this sample of schools is economically disadvantaged relative to the surrounding

cities and coastal areas. In addition, over the years conflict between various militant groups and the

government has periodically destabilized particular areas, although peace agreements have recently

been reached with some groups (after the conclusion of this baseline assessment).

Challenges faced by primary school students in this area include low participation rates of school-aged

children in formal and informal education (45-50%) due to difficult geography and long distances to

school. The primary completion is also low (50-60%) due to both in-school and out-of-school factors.

The in-school factors, which also contribute to poor student performance as well as high repetition

and drop-out rates, include poor learning environment, low teacher performance caused by inadequacy

of teachers’ training opportunities and programs, teachers’ lack of particular mother tongue language

skills, overcrowded classrooms, and scarcity of teaching and learning materials. Out-of-school factors

related to low participation and completion rates include parent illiteracy, poverty, pre-arranged and

early marriages, boys and girls gender biases, and low appreciation on the value of education.2

The Literacy Boost Assessment and Formative Research on Language and Learning conducted in 2009

also suggested the presence of a disconnect between children’s reading outcomes and the language of

instruction. Until 2012, public schools were mandated to use English and Filipino as the languages of

instruction, regardless of whether pupils come from indigenous communities. A fledgling Mother

Tongue language of instruction policy has since been implemented. However, a majority of public

school teachers come from migrant dominant language populations such as Filipino and may not be as

competent in delivering lessons in the mandated mother tongue as they are in Filipino.

Methods

Sampling

The sample for this baseline assessment encompasses 551 grade 1 students and 568 grade 2 students,

divided between 15 intervention schools set to receive the Literacy Boost intervention (n = 596) and

14 comparison schools not set to receive the Literacy Boost intervention (n = 523) for at least one

year. The 15 Literacy Boost intervention schools were selected from a pool of Save the Children

Sponsorship funded schools based on low reading outcomes in early primary grades, willingness of the

school/barangay local government units to implement the program, and presence of mother-tongue

speaking teachers. The 14 comparison schools were found that matched the average profile of the

1 This report will use the term Tagalog to refer to the native spoken language of a subset of the population of the

Philippines, and the term Filipino to refer to the standardized written language tested in the grade 2 assessment. The differences between Filipino and Tagalog are minor, as Filipino is essentially a formalized version of Tagalog. 2 Based on 2007 Save the Children situational analysis.


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intervention schools based on similar enrollments, mother tongue language in the school, geography,

and other ongoing SC interventions.

Intervention and comparison groups of schools are receiving some additional interventions from Save

the Children. Some differences do exist between intervention and comparison groups in terms of

these interventions: all Literacy Boost intervention schools receive other basic education, school health

& nutrition, disaster risk reduction, and child protection interventions. However, nine of the

comparison schools receive no basic education, disaster risk reduction, or child protection

interventions, and the same nine receive less school health & nutrition interventions than do nearly all

of the Literacy Boost intervention schools. This represents an important difference between

Literacy Boost and comparison groups, and should be controlled for to the extent

possible at endline.

In each of the 29 schools in this study, 20 children in grade 1 and 20 children in grade 2 were set to be

sampled. This process involves randomly selecting ten boys and ten girls where there are more than 20

children present in a grade section on the day of assessment. However, due to primarily to low enrollments/attendance on the day of assessment and secondarily to random assessor error in

recording the correct student code, the final sample size is 41 observations short of the goal of 1160

observations for a rate of 3.5% missing in this manner. In most of the schools, no more than two

observations are missing per grade sampled, but two comparison schools are missing 12 and 15

observations respectively due to low enrollment/attendance.

Measurement

School profile data were collected via direct observation and a survey of school headmasters at every

school in the sample. This data includes information on student enrolment & class size, availability of

textbooks, school facilities & construction, and teacher backgrounds. For the student assessment, all

students in the sample were asked about their background characteristics (age, household possessions,

household building materials, health indicators, etc.). Students were also asked about their family

members and their reading habits (who they had seen reading in the week prior to the assessment,

who had read to them, etc).

After collecting this background data, all students were given a literacy test composed of six

components administered through five sub-tests: concepts about print, letter knowledge, single word

recognition (reading of most used words), reading fluency & accuracy (words per minute read

correctly and total percentage of passage read correctly; both within the same sub-test), and a set of

comprehension questions linked to the fluency & accuracy passage. The same set of comprehension

questions were administered for both those students who could read independently (reading

comprehension) and those who could not and thus had the assessor read to them (listening

comprehension). The letter knowledge, most used words, fluency & accuracy, and comprehension sub-

tests were conducted using the Filipino language for grade 2 students, and either T’boli, Ilonggo, or

Maguindanaoan for the grade 1 students depending on their mother tongue. All assessment

instructions were given in Filipino for grade 2 students or in mother tongue for grade 1 students.3

3 In some cases, the grade 1 sample in a given school was split between multiple languages depending on the mother

tongue of the student. However, due to the limited set of three mother tongue languages, not every child’s mother tongue could be accommodated.


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To test inter-rater reliability, or the consistency with which children’s responses were recorded the

same way between different assessors, 10% of students (n=110) were assessed by two enumerators

simultaneously. Long one-way ANOVA techniques were used to calculate the intra-class correlation

within pairs of assessors for a measure of reliability. Table 1 presents the results below. Using Fleiss’

benchmarks for excellent (ICC>0.75), good or fair (0.75>=ICCA>0.4), and poor (0.4>=ICC); all of the

literacy outcome variables exhibited excellent or good/fair inter-rater reliability overall. These include

concepts about print (0.97), letters (0.88), MUW (0.77), fluency (0.67) accuracy (0.5), reading

comprehension (0.96), listening comprehension (0.99), and whether or not the student was a reader

(0.75)4. This means that overall, the assessors generally evaluated children’s responses in the same way,

and thus a child’s score on the literacy assessment generally did not depend on which assessor tested

that child.

However, reliability varied substantially by assessment language. Reliability was Good/Fair for T’boli

letters at 0.63 and Maguindanaoan listening comprehension at 0.52. Reliability was poor for T’boli

MUW and Ilonggo MUW (0.18 and 0.6, respectively), for T’boli fluency (truncated at zero), for T’boli

accuracy (truncated at zero), and T’boli reader versus nonreader (0.17). Based on the reliability data, it appears that different T’boli assessors had very little consistency in the manner

they assessed children. This means that each T’boli assessor tended to record children’s

responses in a different way than other T’boli assessors. This may be linked to some

aspect of the T’boli language – if there are many acceptable ways to pronounce a given

word, for example, or if the orthography is deep (exhibiting a complex and/or

inconsistent relationship between pronunciation and spelling). It could also be linked to a

low quality of assessment by the T’boli assessors. Thus, a high level of caution should be

employed when interpreting the T’boli results, and at endline more care must be taken

to train all assessors more thoroughly on inter-rater reliability to ensure consistent data

gathering.5

4 A calculation of words correct per minute was used as the basis for distinguishing readers (a rate of at least five words read

correctly in 30 seconds) from nonreaders (under a rate of five words read correctly in 30 seconds). Seventy-four percent of

connected text sub-test scores exhibited a 60-second capture value labeled as ‘null’ in the automatically-generated data

spreadsheet. Given the fact that the time remaining never seemed to indicate that 60 seconds had elapsed, it was assumed that

these observations were nonreaders for whom the assessor stopped the assessment before 60 seconds had elapsed. It was also

noted that it would be extremely unlikely for children to read any of the Filipino, T’boli, Ilonggo, or Maguindanaoan

passages in under 60 seconds. A possible exception is the Maguindanaoan passage, which was 60 words long. However, the

Maguindanaoan readers were generally the weakest readers as qualitatively reported by the assessors. Thus, these ‘null’

values were recoded as 0 words per minute read correctly.

Even given these adjustments, the percentage of nonreaders may be inflated because there is evidence that the 60 second

marker may not have always been captured when it should have been. According to reliability data, ten percent of the time

one assessor would not record a 60-second mark while the other would. It is assumed that one assessor mistakenly reset their

grid test and did not wait for the 60-second capture but rather quickly marked incorrect words from memory in order to move

the assessment forward. 5 The T’boli assessors were anecdotally observed to internalize the training less readily as their peers, and may have required

additional training in the assessment rules and technology.


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Table 1: Reliability of Outcome Variables by Intra-class Correlation (ICC) Measure Overall Filipino T’boli Ilonggo Maguindanaoan

CAP 0.97a -e -e -e -e

Letters 0.88a 0.94a 0.63b 0.95a 0.8a

MUW 0.77a 0.91a 0.18c 0.60b 0.91a

Fluency 0.67b 0.63b 0d 0.58b -

Accuracy 0.5b 0.73b 0d 0.46b 0.98a

Reading Comp. 0.96a 0.96a -f -f -f

Listening

Comp.

0.99a 0.99a 0.98a 0.99a 0.52b

Reader or

Nonreader?

0.75b 0.74 0.00c 0.66b -f

a Excellent b Good/Fair c Poor d Truncated at zero e Not calculated, as the CAP questions did not differ by language group except in language of the questions f Insufficient observations to calculate

Analysis Techniques

To test the comparability of students in the intervention and comparison samples, this report will use

comparison of means through t-tests, with clustered standard errors to account for the grouping of

student-level data within schools. Summary statistics, accompanied by clustered t-tests, will be used to

analyze students’ performance in each of the five literacy sub-tests. Finally, this report will look to

multilevel regression models to explore relationships between literacy skills and student background,

school characteristics and community literacy environment.

Analysis: Comparability between Intervention, Comparison, and Sponsorship

Samples

First, this report will investigate the comparability of the two samples: students placed in the

intervention group and students placed in the comparison group. Comparability will be examined in

terms of students’ background, school characteristics, and home literacy environment (HLE). To

evaluate whether differences in sample averages can be generalized to be population of grade 2

students among these schools, clustered t-tests will be used that adjust standard errors to account for

the clustering of children in schools.

Student Background and School Characteristics

Student Characteristics and Schooling Experience

Table 2 below displays the average values for a range of background characteristics for each of the

intervention and control sample of students. The sample as a whole is comprised of students about

seven to eight years in age who come from a household of three to four other family members on

average. While students were given the option of reporting more than one language spoken at home,

the vast majority (97%) only reported speaking a single language at home. The linguistic composition of

students seems similar across schools, with the largest linguistic group being the T’boli speakers (46%),


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followed by Ilonggo speakers (36%) and Maguindanaoan speakers (15%). Literacy Boost

programming should accommodate the diversity of different language speakers in

schools, and ensure that all teacher training content, community action activities, and any

print materials developed are equally relevant to the different linguistic groups.

The vast majority of students walk to school and have attended an early childhood development (ECD)

program prior to primary school, mostly kindergarten. About one-fifth of the entire sample reports

having repeated a grade, mostly grade 1, but almost a quarter of students did not know whether or not

they had repeated a grade.

Table 2: Basic and Educational Student Background Measure Comparison Intervention Sig. N

Female 51% 50%

1119

Age (years) 7.4 7.3

1007a

Number of household members 3.6 3.6

1119

Speaks Tagalog at home 2% 1%

1119

Speaks Maguindanaoan at home 3% 8%

1119

Speaks Ilonggo at home 41% 34%

1119

Speaks T’boli at home 56% 53%

1119

Walks to school 89% 89%

1119

Previously attended ECD program 92% 89%

1102a

Previously attended daycare 17% 20%

1119

Previously attended kindergarten 73% 68%

1119

Years of ECD experience 1.7 1.6

607a

Repeated grade 1 23% 24%

834a

Repeated grade 2 6% 4%

834a

* indicates statistically significant difference from comparison group at the 5% level. a sample size lower than the full sample size due to ‘don’t know’ responses

Socio-Economic Status

In terms of socio-economic status (SES), most students have houses with bamboo walls (the cheapest

wall-building material inquired about), with one quarter living in homes with wooden walls and about

14% in homes with cement walls (the most expensive wall-building material). Similarly, the plurality of

students live in houses with bamboo floors, with another one fifth living in houses with cement floors

and about 15% in houses with wooden floors. Another fifth of students live in houses with dirt floors

(the cheapest type of floor). The average student comes from a household with about two of the five

possessions listed in the survey, with electricity as the most prevalent and refrigerators as the least

prevalent. For livestock, students report household ownership of between one and two types of

livestock on average, with cows as the most commonly owned and goats and pigs as the least

commonly owned.


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Table 3: Socio-Economic Status Measure Comparison Intervention Sig. N

House walls made of bamboo 56% 56%

1119

House walls made of wood 24% 24%

1119

House walls made of cement 14% 15%

1119

House floor is dirt 21% 24%

1119

House floor made of bamboo 42% 41%

1119

House floor made of wood 12% 12%

1119

House floor made of cement 21% 21%

1119

Household has radio 32% 33%

1119

Household has electricity 64% 59%

1119

Household has refrigerator 14% 11%

1119

Household has television 41% 38%

1119

Household has cell phone 54% 52%

1119

Total # of household possessions 2.0 1.9

1119

Household has horses 23% 27%

1119

Household has cows 42% 48%

1119

Household has goats 16% 19%

1119

Household has pigs 17% 18%

1119

Household has other type of livestock 40% 30% * 1119

Total # of types of livestock 1.4 1.4

1119 * indicates statistically significant difference from comparison group at the 5% level.

Time

It may be important to examine how students spend their out-of-school time in order to understand

their opportunity for study and participation in Literacy Boost community activities. Thirty-five percent

of students report working outside the home ‘sometimes’ and nine percent report working outside the

home ‘every day.’ These out-of-home work responsibilities cause almost one fifth of students to

sometimes miss school. Many more students report performing household chores ‘sometimes’ (40%)

or ‘every day’ (57%), although about half the number of students report missing school for chore as

report missing school for work. Almost one quarter of students report working ‘sometimes’ or ‘every

day’ and performing chores ‘every day’ – this may be an important variable to examine during

multilevel analysis as these are the busiest students according to their self-reports. Most students

report studying ‘every day,’ more than report either working or performing chores ‘every day,’ And

there are no differences in this time allocation by groups as can be seen in Table 4. Although this is a

good sign, one quarter of students reports studying less than every day, and Literacy

Boost should help teachers encourage all students to study every day as well as helping

parents understand the value of frequent study and its linkage to reading skill level. The

multilevel analysis section toward the end of this report will test this linkage.


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Table 4: Time Measure Comparison Intervention Sig. N

Works sometimes or every day

outside home 39% 46%

1084a

Works before school 12% 13%

1119

Works after school 14% 17%

1119

Sometimes misses school for work 18% 16%

1119

Does chores everyday 56% 51%

1102a

Chores before school 45% 43%

1119

Chores after school 47% 46%

1119

Sometimes misses school for chores 12% 11%

1119

Has work sometimes/every day and

chores every day 22% 22%

1119

Studies every day 77% 78%

1088a

a sample size lower than the full sample size due to ‘don’t know’ responses

Health

Nearly all students ate breakfast the morning of assessment, and the average breakfast size was about

two items. On average, about 40% of students report being ill in the past month, with headache and

fever as the most prevalent symptoms. Significantly more students in the comparison group reported

illness than in the intervention group.

The vast majority of students report that their families obtain water from an improved source (tap,

pump, deep well, or spring) although only 4% report a specific, safe method that their families use to

make water safe to drink (boiling, chlorine, filter, or sunlight). Finally, students measure about 114

centimeters in height and weigh about 22 kilograms on average, and Table 5 breaks this down by grade.

For boys and girls, average body mass index (BMI) is within the normal range as established by the

World Health Organization.6

Table 5: Health Measure Comparison Intervention Sig. N

Had breakfast morning of

assessment 94% 94%

1119

Size of breakfast 2.0 1.9

1108a

Was Ill in the Past Month 52% 40% ** 811a

Recently had headache 26% 18% * 1119

Recently had stomachache 6% 6%

1119

Recently had fever 16% 12%

1119

Recently had cough 8% 8%

1119

Family gets water from

improved source 92% 90%

1017a

Family treats water with specific 5% 3%

1119

6 http://www.who.int/childgrowth/standards/bmi_for_age/en/index.html


16.12.12 14

method

Household has toilet 91% 78%

265a

Weight in kilograms (grade 1) 17.9 18.2 529

Weight in kilograms (grade 2) 20.1 19.8 565

Height in centimeters (grade 1) 110 111.3 501

Height in centimeters (grade 2) 117.3 116.3 560

Body mass index (grade 1) 14.7 14.7 492

Body mass index (grade 2) 14.6 14.6 559

* indicates statistically significant difference from comparison group at the 5% level, ** at 1% level. a sample size lower than the full sample size due to ‘don’t know’ responses

Turning to school characteristics, almost 60% of schools serve food to students, and only one-third

have a school management committee (although nearly all schools have a parent-teacher association).

The entire sample of schools is somewhat isolated from urban areas and roads, as the average school is about 14 kilometers from the nearest district center and about two kilometers from the nearest tar

road. Schools infrastructure is not always fully developed: 17% percent of schools lack an office for the

headmaster, 22% lack electricity, 40% lack a water point (and only 34% treat their water), 30% lack

clean latrines for student use (and only 53% have a hand washing station with soap), 14% lack

ventilation, and 60% lack play equipment. Most worryingly, a full 73% of schools do not have a library.

Literacy Boost should compensate for this lack of public access to books by establishing

Book Banks where children can borrow a variety of engaging, skill level-appropriate print.

In addition, 52% of the classrooms assessed lack a legible blackboard. Literacy Boost can make a

difference for students in these classrooms by providing posters and other instructional

and visual aids as well as helping teachers construct their own materials for a print-rich

classroom environment in which teachers have legible assets from which to teach

students.

In terms of teachers and training, supervisors appear to visit schools biannually on average. Teachers

receive Ministry of Education in-service training (INSET) either annually or biannually, but receive

other INSET more frequently – either biannually or monthly. Schools reported about one teacher

transferred in and one transferred out during the course of the school year. Because the assessment

was conducted early in the school year, this may be an indication of high teacher turnover. Literacy

Boost should train as many teachers who might conceivably teach grades 1-3 at each

intervention school as possible to mitigate the effects of teacher turnover.

Looking to the languages spoken by students, schools appear to be linguistically diverse with much

overlap in students speaking one language versus another. Again, it will be important for Literacy

Boost programming to accommodate this diversity by ensuring that all teacher training

content, community activities, and materials created are equally relevant for all ethnic

groups.


16.12.12 15

Table 6: School Characteristics Measure Comparison Intervention N

Distance to district center in kilometers 9.4 18.3 28a

Distance to nearest tar road in kilometers 6.0 1.7 28a

School has headmaster office 93% 87% 44

School has electricity 73% 80% 44

School has a water point 42% 66% 44

School water is treated 27% 40% 44

School latrines for students generally clean 71% 60% 44

School has hand washing station with soap 29% 60% 44

School has library 35% 34% 44

# of new teachers at start of school year 0.9 1.2 28a

# of teachers who have transferred in 0.5 0.8 27a

# of teachers who have transferred out 0.6 0.9 28a

Frequency of supervisor visitsb 2.1 2.0 44

Frequency of MoE INSETb 1.7 1.6 44

Frequency of other INSETb 2.3 2.4 44

Some students speak Ilokano 0% 27% 44

Some students speak Ilonggo 93% 100% 44

Some students speak T’boli 73% 67% 44

# of languages spoken by school students 1.9 2.3 44

School serves food to students 66% 60% 44

School/classrooms have ventilation 78% 93% 44

School has play equipment 42% 50% 26a

School has school management committee 30% 40% 44

Blackboard is legible in classroom of

assessment 43% 46% 44 a Less than full sample size due to missing data b 1 = monthly, 2 = biannually, 3 = annually

Examining school characteristics disaggregated by sample group reveals some potentially important

differences. Comparison schools appear closer to district centers than do intervention schools,

although the situation is reversed for distance to nearest tar road. Intervention schools appear more

likely to have certain advantages over comparison schools: in terms of water and sanitation, more

intervention schools have a water point, treat their water, and have a hand washing station with soap.

More intervention schools have ventilation, play equipment, and SMCs. Intervention schools have a

more linguistically diverse student body with some schools reporting Ilokano speakers7 versus no

comparison schools reporting having Ilokano students. All of these differences should be

controlled for during endline analysis as potentially important differences between

comparison and intervention groups.

7 Ilokano is another mother tongue spoken in the area. Due to the low number of children who speak this language as their

mother tongue at these schools, Ilokano literacy skills were not assessed.


16.12.12 16

Using clustered t-tests to investigate statistically significant differences among student background and

examining the differences between schools, the two sample groups appear similar on the vast majority

of student characteristics, as well as most school characteristics with a few exceptions. This is

evidence that the intervention and comparison groups are generally comparable once

controlling for the differences in school characteristics, and thus the groupings can be

used as the basis for impact analysis at endline.

Home literacy environment

Household Print Environment

Turning to students’ home literacy environment, Figure 1 shows that the majority of students have

textbooks in their home, although a significant minority do not. This is the most common type of

reading material in the household reported by students; little over one fourth of students report

religious reading materials in the home and only 11% or less on average report having any other type

of material. Indeed, the average number of types of print reported in the household is only one.

Literacy Boost programming should aim to address the deficiency in variety of print available to students through material creation and community activities that allow all

students access to storybooks, coloring books, newspapers, magazines, etc.

* indicates statistically significant difference from comparison group at the 5% level using standard t-tests instead of

clustered t-tests. No statistically significant findings are present for clustered t-tests.

Students were also asked the question, ‘what do you do to learn to read better?’ and assessors

categorized students’ first response into one of five categories.8 As Figure 2 shows, a large proportion

of students’ responses were categorized as receiving help from family/community members, and the

percent of children reporting hard work/practice outside of school was double that reporting hard

work/practice in school. Listening to children’s perspective that learning to read, for them, is

something that largely takes place with family and community members, Literacy Boost

can build on this link between family/community and learning to read through educating

8 The five categories were receiving help from family/community member, receiving help from teacher, hard work/practice

outside of school, hard work/practice inside school, or the study of a particular language mechanic such as studying letters. Inter-rater reliability was excellent for this measure with a 0.89 ICC.

68%

16% 8%

2% 3%

31%

58%*

9%* 4%* 1% 1%*

24%*

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Textbooks Storybooks Coloring Books Newspapers Magazines ReligiousReading

Materials

Figure 1: Types of Reading Materials in the Home by Group

Comparison

Intervention


16.12.12 17

parents about the most effective strategies for supporting the development of their

children’s literacy skills through workshops based on the flipbook of Community

Strategies for Enhancing Literacy.

Despite children’s perception that learning to read takes place with family and community members,

Figure 3 shows that only about a third of students exchanged books with others in the week prior to

the assessment, and less than a third read to anyone in the week prior to the assessment. Literacy

Boost can enhance students’ community literacy practices by providing more materials

available for borrowing via Book Banks and opportunities and for reading to others

through Reading Buddies.

Household Literacy Practices

Figure 4 takes a look inside students’ household and at the extent to which their family members

engaged in various practices supportive of children’s literacy within the week prior to the assessment.

57%

17% 16%

8%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Help fromfamily/community

member

Help from teacher Hard work/practiceoutside school

Hard work/practicein school

Figure 2: What do you do to learn to read better?

30%

42%

31%

37%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

Exchanged books w/ others Read to others

In the past week, student…

Figure 3: Student Literacy Practices by Group

Comparison

Intervention


16.12.12 18

While most household members encouraged students to study, little more than half were seen

reading, read to the student, told a story to the student, or played a game with the student. Less than

half sang a song to the student. While reading to students requires literate household members, the

remaining activities of telling stories, singing, and playing games do not require literacy. Literacy

Boost can enhance students’ household literacy environment by providing household

members, especially parents, with information about the value of telling stories, singing,

and playing games with their children and suggestions for how to do so via the

Community Strategies for Enhancing Literacy flipbook and associated parental awareness

workshops.

No statistically significant differences at the 5% level

Importantly, none of these household literacy practices variables exhibited any statistically significant

difference between intervention and comparison groups. However, when using t-tests without

clustering standard errors all types of print except for newspapers suggest that the comparison group

may enjoy a statistically significant advantage over the intervention group for the presence of more

types of print in the household. The difference in number of types of print reported in the

household should be controlled for during endline impact analysis.

Analysis: Baseline Results of Reading Skills by Sub-Test

Table 7 presents an overview of mean scores on each sub-test for comparison and intervention

students for grade 1 and 2. The intervention group differs statistically from the comparison group only

in terms of concepts about print. The similarity of average scores supports proceeding with a

difference-in-difference impact analysis of Literacy Boost at endline, and the endline

analysis can also test if Literacy Boost helped intervention students catch up to the

comparison group.

Table 7: Baseline Reading Scores and Benchmarks by Grade and Sample Group

Literacy Sub-Test Grade N Comparison Intervention

Benchmark

Goals for

56%

78%

51% 50%

41%

56%

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

Seen reading Encouragingchild to study

Reading tochild

Telling storyto child

Singing songto child

Playing gamewith child

% of household members … in the past week

Figure 4: Household Literacy Practices by Group

Comparison

Intervention


16.12.12 19

Endline

--- Full Sample ---

% Concepts about Print

correct

1 551 43% 34%* 55%

2 568 44% 45% 73%

% Letters correct 1 551 45% 42% 76%

2 568 61% 66% 89%

MUW correct 1 551 19% 18% 15%

2 568 42% 49% 95%

>0 MUW (% of sample) 1 551 34% 30% 100%

2 568 59% 70% 100%

Reader (% of sample)a 1 551 3% 6% 47%d

2 568 31% 38% 83%e

--- Nonreaders ---

% Listening Comprehension

correctb

1 525 48% 40% 70% d

2 371 20% 18% 30% e

--- Readers ---

Fluency (WPM correct) 1 26 38.6 32.6 19 d

2 197 35.9 36.5 33.9 e

% Accuracy (words correct) 1 26 86% 76% 90% f

2 197 83% 83% 59% f

% Reading Comprehension

correctc

1 26 69% 43% 90% f

2 197 29% 25% 59% f * indicates statistically significant difference from comparison group at the 5% level

a Reader defined as student who read at least 5 words correctly in 30 seconds. All other observations (nonreaders) were

coded as 0 for fluency and accuracy due to inability to confidently estimate their scores. b 247 comparison and 278 intervention students took the grade 1 listening comprehension sub-test, and 185 comparison

and 186 intervention students took the grade 2 listening comprehension sub-test.

c 7 comparison and 19 intervention students took the grade 1reading comprehension sub-test, and 84 comparison and 113

intervention students took the grade 2 reading comprehension sub-test.

d Sample average plus two standard deviations used to calculate benchmark. Two standard deviations are used due to the

fact that these children have only recently started grade 1 and have not yet had much of any reading instruction. e Sample average plus one standard deviation used to calculate benchmark f Represents the minimal benchmark for the ‘instructional’ level of the Philippines Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) oral

test

Table 7 breaks down the various sub-tests into three areas – full sample, nonreaders, and readers. The

scores are presented in this way to reflect the varying needs of students who fall into the nonreader

category (those who could not read at least five words correctly in 30 seconds) and those who fall into

the reader category (those who could read at least five words correctly in 30 seconds). For the entire

sample, grade 1 students correctly answered only about one third of concepts about print questions

and grade 2 students could answer only just under half of these questions. As this is the most basic test

and a proxy for students’ exposure to books (especially storybooks), this is very alarming and indicates that Literacy Boost should increase students’ access to print through materials creation,

Book Banks, Reading Buddies, and Reading Camps involving activities where students can

actually practice handling books themselves.


16.12.12 20

Both grade 1 and 2 students exhibit large deficiencies in letter knowledge, as grade 1 students could

identify only 40% of letters on average and grade 2 students 64% on average. Likely strongly linked to

this deficiency are students’ abysmal most-used-word scores (18% of words read correctly for grade 1

and 46% for grade 2). Over two-thirds of grade 1 students and one third of grade 2 students could not

correctly read even one most-used-word. While increasing students’ exposure to print as

suggested above, Literacy Boost should also focus on giving teachers the training and

tools to help students learn the entire uppercase and lowercase alphabet, associated

phonics, and decoding skills to apply their knowledge of letters and phonics. This in-school

learning should be reinforced through Reading Camp activities that emphasize practicing

letters and reading basic words.

Due to this lack of foundational skills, results of the reading passage sub-test identify a full 96% of grade

1 students and 67% of grade 2 students as nonreaders (unable to read at least five words correctly in

30 seconds). For these students, the assessor read the passage and then asked students the reading

comprehension questions to estimate students’ ‘listening comprehension,’ an indicator of skills such as

oral vocabulary, listening ability, attention, etc. The nonreaders scored very poorly on listening comprehension (39% of comprehension questions correctly answered by grade 1 students and 21% by

grade 2 students), suggesting underdevelopment of these skills. Unsurprisingly, grade 1 students’

listening comprehension in mother tongue was greater than grade 2 students’ listening comprehension

in Filipino. Literacy Boost should encourage teachers, Reading Camp facilitators, and

parents to read or tell more stories to students in class, during Reading Camps, or at

home. In addition, family and community members can also engage students in

conversation, active listening, and other listening comprehension activities throughout

the day as suggested by the Community Strategies for Enhancing Literacy flipbook.

The fluency (words correct per minute) and accuracy (total percent of words correct) scores of

readers, although far from excellent, demonstrate the large divergence in skills between readers and

nonreaders. However, it should be noted that readers comprised only 4% of the grade 1 mother

tongue sample and 33% of the grade 2 Filipino sample. At least for the grade 1 reader sample, this

number may be too small to draw conclusions about mother tongue reading skills, and thus this report

will explore only grade 2 readers for the remainder of the report.9

Among grade 2 Filipino readers, students exhibited reading speeds of about 37 words correct per

minute when reading connected text. Students also read a majority (85%) of the text correctly.

However, readers’ reading comprehension scores barely exceed one quarter of reading

comprehension questions correctly answered, suggesting that students may lack a sufficient command

of Filipino language skills (especially vocabulary), speed, or both in order to understand the text from

which they are able to read the vast majority of words. Literacy Boost should help give students

more engaging opportunities and materials to practice their Filipino vocabulary and other

oral language skills as well as to practice reading Filipino texts in order to increase their

fluency and ultimately their reading comprehension. To support this, Literacy Boost

should train teachers and community activity facilitators to engage in active reading with


9 The 26 grade 1 readers were split evenly between the T’boli assessment and the Ilonggo assessment, and fairly evenly

spread among eight schools for each language.


16.12.12 21


read to.

Due to the lack of detailed benchmarks or competencies for grade 1 mother tongue literacy skills, the

upper range of scores is used to consider what is currently possible among these children. The seventh

column of Table 7 presents the scores at the 75th percentile of this sample of students, unless

otherwise indicated. This means that if you line up 100 children from the highest to the lowest score

on an element of the assessment, the first child is above the 99th percentile; the 25th child on line is

above the 75th percentile. This means that he/she has scored higher than 75 percent of the children in

the line. For the higher-order skills such as fluency, accuracy, and reading comprehension; two

standard deviations above the mean for all grade 1 students, including nonreaders with zero scores, is

used to set a benchmark for the same point in the following school year. Two standard deviations are

used to acknowledge the fact that grade 1 children had only recently begun to learn to read, and are

likely to learn rapidly in one year’s time.

For grade 2 students, benchmarks in Filipino exist from the Philippine Informal Reading Inventory (Phil-IRI) oral test for accuracy and reading comprehension. These standards are reflected for these skills in

Table 7. For all other skills, the 75th percentile benchmark is used except for fluency, for which one

standard deviation above the mean for all grade 2 students, including nonreaders with zero scores, is

used to set a benchmark for the same point in the following school year. As an initial goal for

Literacy Boost, children should be performing at these levels on average by endline, to be

conducted one calendar year after the baseline.


16.12.12 22

Analysis of Individual Skills by Language and Sex: Summary Statistics and

Constituent Items10

This section takes an in-depth look at each individual sub-test, disaggregating by language and sex for

each grade. To report statistical significance, the results of multivariate regression analysis with clustered standard errors11 are used rather than clustered t-tests. This is done to test if significant

differences between groups exist once controlling for a variety of other factors. The models from

which these regression results are drawn can be found in Appendix A for grade 1 and Appendix B for

grade 2.

Concepts about Print

The first sub-test of the reading assessment consisted of 11 ‘concepts about print’ (CAP) questions.

These questions concern familiarity with books – where to start, which way to read, what is a letter,

what is a word, etc.

Grade 1

For grade 1, Ilonggo girls score significantly higher than all other language-sex groups. Although

Maguindanaoan students scored lower than the other groups, controlling for those instances in which

the assessment was administered in a language other than the mother tongue of the student (as was

the case for many Maguindanaoan speakers)12, the Maguindanaoan grade 1 students actually score on

par with the other language groups. This means that the Maguindanaoan students performed equally as

well as other language speakers in CAP when given the assessment in their own language, but

performed poorly when given the assessment in another language.

Grade 2

For grade 2, controlling for a variety of student background and school characteristic variables,13 girls

consistently perform better than boys across languages, and Ilonggo speakers outscore the other

groups.

Table 8 below displays the frequencies of correct answers to each CAP question. Grade 1 and grade 2

students were given the same CAP subtest, although the subtest was administered in mother tongue

for grade 1 students and in Filipino for grade 2 students. Overall, the most difficult CAP questions for

grade 1 were 11, 4, 3, and 10. The most difficult questions for grade 2 were 11, 10, 5, and 4. The

easiest questions for grade 1 were 2, 5, and 1. For grade 2, the easiest were 2, 1, and 6. It seems students are familiar to an extent with the physical parts of books and to an extent the

concept of words, but less so with how the text and book come together to form a story

with a title, beginning, and end. And as the overall performance on the CAP sub-test was

poor, Literacy Boost will not only need to enhance children’s access to storybooks

10

The graphics in this section are generated using 95% of the 1,610 observations from an expanded sample of schools including 15 additional Save the Children Basic Education Sponsorship schools. As the results are disaggregated by language group, 78 observations who reported speaking more than one language at home were excluded. 11

See appendices A and B. For grade 1, the model controls for the mismatch between mother tongue language and language of assessment. This mismatch occurred 18% of the time for grade 1 students. 12

This occurred for 16% of T’boli speakers, 2% of Ilonggo speakers, and 33% of Maguindanaoan speakers. 13

The list of controls for every grade 1 model can be seen in Appendix A and for every grade 2 model in Appendix B.


16.12.12 23

through material creation, but to engage children in storybook reading through training

teachers and Reading Camp facilitators how to demonstrate storybook reading during

story time.

Table 8: CAP Constituent Items by Language and Sex CAP Item Grade Average Score

CAP 1: Where is the cover? Grade 1 66%

Grade 2 60%

CAP 2: How do you open the book? Grade 1 82%

Grade 2 77%

CAP 3: Where is the title of the story? Grade 1 28%

Grade 2 31%

CAP 4: Where is the beginning of the story? Grade 1 26%

Grade 2 22%

CAP 5: Can you turn to page 8? Grade 1 24%

Grade 2 64%

CAP 6: Point to one word. Ok, point to another. Grade 1 52%

Grade 2 46%

CAP 7: Where is the word on which I begin to read? Grade 1 42%

Grade 2 55%

CAP 8: Which words come next? Grade 1 38%

Grade 2 43%

CAP 9: (at the end of the line) Ok, where do I go now? Grade 1 37%

Grade 2 41%

CAP 10: Can you follow along with your finger as I read? Grade 1 17%

Grade 2 42%

CAP 11: Where is the end of the story? Grade 1 6%

Grade 2 10%

Grade 1 Maguindanaoan students may need particular attention in this area – they scored

significantly lower than T’boli and Ilonggo students on CAP items 4-9 in grade 1.

However, T’boli students were the disadvantaged group in grade 2, scoring lower than

the other groups in items 3-11. In terms of sex, only on CAP question 2 in grade 2 was there a

significant difference between boys and girls overall – in favor of girls.

Letter Awareness

The next sub-test examined students’ letter awareness. Students were shown a chart of all uppercase

and lowercase letters and asked to name the letter, pronounce the letter sound, or give a word that

begins with that letter.

Grade 1


16.12.12 24

For grade 1, girls consistently outperform boys, and the Ilonggo speakers were able to identify more

letters on average than the other two language groups. However, regardless of language group

and sex, all grade 1 children scored very low on their letter knowledge, and Literacy

Boost programming should focus on helping grade 1 children master the most basic skills

of concepts about print and letter knowledge so they can apply these skills toward

decoding, single-word reading, and reading of connected text. Programming should

perhaps incorporate some special activities to engage boys and ensure that they keep

pace with girls as both sexes enhance their letter knowledge.

The next series of figures, 5-10, display children’s performance on individual letters, for those majority

instances in which the child’s home language matched the language of assessment. Figures 5 and 6

display T’boli children’s scores on the T’boli uppercase and lowercase letter subtests. It appears that

these students are most familiar with their vowels (with the exception of U and perhaps I)14 and a few

consonants such as S and B. Students struggle the most with consonants G, T, Y, H, W, D, and NG.

14

While children scored low on the uppercase I, this may be due to confusion with the lowercase l.

62%

52% 52% 51% 46% 43% 42%

37% 36% 36% 32% 32% 30% 30% 29% 28% 28% 26% 26% 25%

13%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

A O S Ó B É E M K U L N F D G I T Y H W NG

Figure 5: T'boli Speaker T'boli Uppercase Letters Score


16.12.12 25

Figures 7 and 8 present a similar pattern for Ilonggo speakers’ performance on Ilonggo uppercase and

lowercase letters. Children scored a bit higher on uppercase O, A, S, and B and on lowercase o, e, s, r,

and k but performed poorly on many of the same letters as T’boli students, especially NG.

55% 53% 48% 48% 47%

39% 39% 38% 37% 35% 33% 32% 29% 27% 26% 24% 23% 22% 20% 19% 12%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

o ó e é s i m a k f b u y ng w l g t d h ng

Figure 6: T'boli Speaker T'boli Lowercase Letters Score

74% 67% 64%

59% 53% 53% 52% 52% 51% 51% 49% 48% 47% 47% 47% 45% 44% 43%

36%

20%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

O A S B L E R K M P U N G W D T Y H I NG

Figure 7: Ilonggo Speaker Ilonggo Uppercase Letters Score


16.12.12 26

The Maguindanaoan speaking students exhibited the greatest range in scores from moderate

performance on uppercase S and A and lowercase s to mediocre performance on most letters to

dismal performance on the most difficult letter for all language groups, NG.

73% 64% 61%

57% 56% 53% 53% 51% 49% 49% 48% 47% 45% 45% 44% 42% 39% 39% 38%

21%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

o e s r k m p w i a y b n g h u t l d ng

Figure 8: Ilonggo Speaker Ilonggo Lowercase Letters Score

72% 70%

53% 49% 49% 47% 45% 45% 42% 40% 40% 40% 38% 37% 37% 30%

12%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

S A E M K B N U P G L D W T Y I NG

Figure 9: Maguindanaoan Speaker Maguindanaoan Uppercase Letter Scores


16.12.12 27

It appears that overall, grade 1 students perform very poorly on all their letters but follow a similar

pattern for most identified and least identified letters. Literacy Boost should give teachers and

community activity facilitators the training and tools to help grade 1 children learn both

their vowels and consonants through a focus on letter knowledge and phonological

awareness activities coupled with material creation such as alphabet posters and make-

and-take letters.

Grade 2

Among grade two students tested on Filipino letters, girls again consistently outscore boys. Similar to

the grade 1 mother tongue letter scores, Ilonggo speakers outscore their T’boli and Maguindanaoan

peers in Filipino letter knowledge. While helping both sexes and all language groups master

their letters, Literacy Boost programming should integrate some activities and materials

that are especially relevant to boys, T’bolis, and Maguindanaoans in South-Central

Mindanao, across grades. Such targeted programming can supplement standard Literacy

Boost programming to ensure that boys, T’boli speakers, and Maguindanaoan speakers

catch up with and learn together with girls and Ilonggo speakers.

Figures 11 and 12 break down the Filipino letter scores into grade 2 students’ performance on

individual letters. All but 10-20% of grade 2 children can identify uppercase O, A, B, and S and

lowercase o, s, a, e, x, and r. The most difficult letters for grade 2 children are uppercase and

lowercase J, Q, NG, and Ñ. While building on children’s existing letter knowledge and

addressing the largely unknown letters, in general Literacy Boost programming should

focus on letters and phonological awareness through the teacher training, community

action, and materials creation implementation components. Teachers and community

activity facilitators should spend a large amount of time practicing a variety of fun

activities that help children become more acquainted with their letters, their associated

sounds, and their role in forming words.

67%

51% 50% 46% 46% 46% 45% 42% 40% 40% 38% 38% 37% 34% 32% 28%

12%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

s a e b m k g p y n i u w d l t ng

Figure 10: Maguindanaoan Speaker Maguindanaoan Lowercase Letter Scores


16.12.12 28

Word Recognition: Most Used Words

The most used words (MUW) sub-test consists of a chart of 20 words that the student is asked to

read. These 20 words were identified as ‘most used’ by tabulating the number of times a word

appeared in students’ language arts textbooks.

Grade 1

In grade 1, Ilonggo and Maguindanaoan speakers outperform T’boli speakers in this sub-test on average.

No significant gender differences are found in any of the language groups. The extremely low

scores on most used words are to be expected given children’s incomplete letter

knowledge. While first ensuring that all children develop a firm grasp of the entire

alphabet in both mother tongue and Filipino, Literacy Boost programming should begin

to provide teachers and community activity facilitators with fun activities to guide

children in applying their letter knowledge toward decoding words.

Disaggregating children’s MUW scores by individual most used word, the variation in individual word

scores is limited, ranging between 9-23% of students correctly reading the word for T’boli words, 11-

29% for Ilonggo words, and 10-25% for Maguindanaoan words. This indicates a systematic failure of

children to decode and/or recognize words. Literacy Boost programming should help teachers

89% 78% 76% 74% 72% 69% 67% 66% 63% 60% 59% 57%

49%

35% 23%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

O A B S E X R K M P D L T N C U G F W I H V Z Y J Q NG Ñ

Figure 11: Grade 2 Filipino Uppercase Letter Scores

89% 79% 78% 73% 73% 69% 67% 65% 64% 62% 61% 57%

49%

33% 25%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

o s a e x r b m k ng p c i u f g y d w h t l v z j ng q ñ

Figure 12: Grade 2 Filipino Lowercase Letter Scores


16.12.12 29

effectively instruct students in how to decode words, and give them plenty of opportunity

to practice doing so through in-school and out-of-school activities.

Grade 2

In grade 2, the pattern of Ilonggo and Maguindanaoan speakers outscoring T’boli speakers is repeated

in Figure 21, but in grade 2 girls now outperform boys in the T’boli and Maguindanaoan language

groups. In addition to inferior letter knowledge, it is possible that second grade children

perform so poorly on the most used word sub-test due to deficiencies in their Filipino

vocabulary. Thus, Literacy Boost programming should also ensure that children have

ample opportunity to be exposed to the Filipino language through such activities as story

time in Filipino, Filipino songs, make-and-take of Filipino word materials, etc. For

decoding and recognizing words in their second language of Filipino, boys and T’boli

speakers may need additional support alongside the overall effort to improve all

children’s application of letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary

development toward building proficiency in single-word reading in Filipino.

Readers and Nonreaders

After the most used words sub-test, students are then asked to read aloud a passage of connected text

of about 100 words in length. This passage is based on the most used words and passages found in

students’ language arts textbooks. At this point in the assessment, assessors classify students as either

‘readers’ or ‘nonreaders.’ Readers are defined as students who were able to read at least five words

correctly in 30 seconds.

Grade 1

In grade 1, more girls classified as readers than boys in the T’boli and Ilonggo language groups.

However, these differences are rendered nearly meaningless in light of the fact that less than five

percent of grade 1 students in all categories could read at least ten words correct per minute. The

proportion of mother tongue readers in grade 1 is almost nonexistent, and Literacy Boost

should help more students make the jump from nonreader of connected text to reader of

connected text by providing students with level-appropriate, appealing reading material

and giving students the opportunity to practice reading passages as they progress in their

letter knowledge, decoding skills, and sight reading of words.

Grade 2

The situation is somewhat improved in grade 2 reading of Filipino text, albeit not by much – here only

one third of grade 2 students can be classified as readers. Ilonggo speakers significantly outperform the

T’boli group, and girls significantly outscore boys in T’boli and Ilonggo and boys significantly outscore

girls in Maguindanaoan. This indicates that for Maguindanaoan speakers, the earlier trend of boys’

disadvantage in the lower-order reading skills reverses for higher-order skills (as will also be seen in

accuracy).

Figures 13 and 14 illustrate the substantial divergence in reading ability between nonreaders and

readers across grades. Indeed it appears that the non-reading two-thirds of the grade 2 sample

perform worse than their reading peers by 28 percentage points on CAP questions correct, 35


16.12.12 30

percentage points worse on letter knowledge, and nearly a full 70 percentage points worse than

readers in most used words.

Taking a deeper look at the divergence in most used words, Figure 14 presents a histogram of grade 2

students’ reading scores. The divergence is stark – large proportions of students cluster around zero

most used words correctly read and nearly all or all most used words correctly read, with lower

numbers in between. This indicates that Literacy Boost programs like Reading Buddies will

be important to bridge the gap between readers and nonreaders. The much higher

reading skills of readers represent a valuable asset to draw on in terms of example and

ability to help their non-reading peers practice their listening and read-along skills.

Figure 14: Distribution of Grade 2 Filipino MUW Scores

67%

40%

53%

23%

33%

58%

88% 92%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

% of Grade 2 % CAP % Letters % MUW

Figure 13: Divergence in Skills of Grade 2 Filipino Nonreaders and Readers

Nonreader

Reader


16.12.12 31

Listening Comprehension

Students in the nonreader category were asked the full list of ten comprehension questions (one

summary question, six factual comprehension questions, two inferential comprehension questions, and

one evaluative question) after the assessor read the passage to the student, for a measure of listening

comprehension.

Grade 1

On average, grade 1 nonreaders who were read the passage in their native language answered less than

half of the listening comprehension questions correctly. This indicates not only that these children are

failing to learn to read, but that they may also be failing to develop their oral comprehension skills like

listening, attention, vocabulary, etc. Literacy Boost activities such as story time will be

important for all children to develop their listening comprehension skills.

Grade 2 For grade 2, the T’boli and Ilonggo nonreaders score higher in mother tongue listening comprehension

than the grade 2 students from these language groups score in Filipino listening comprehension. This

makes sense, as students may not have the oral vocabulary to listen and comprehend stories told them

in a second language. However, the Maguindanaoan grade 1 performance in mother tongue was

strangely worse than the Maguindanaoan grade 2 performance in Filipino. More information and

analysis is required to determine why this might be, although it may be related to the nonequivalence

of the Maguindanaoan grade 1 and Filipino grade 2 passages or alternatively a higher rate of exposure

to and use of Filipino among the Maguindanaoan community than the other two language groups. In

any case, for all language groups Literacy Boost should provide for more exposure to

spoken Filipino through activities such as story time.

Figure 15 breaks down students’ performance in listening comprehension into the frequency of correct

responses to literacy comprehension questions and the frequency of correct responses to ‘deep’

comprehension questions (summary, inferential, and evaluative). As expected, students’ literal

010

2030

40

Per

cent

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1% MUW correct


16.12.12 32

comprehension scores surpass their deep comprehension scores. Within the types of deep

comprehension questions, students struggled the most with inferential questions, followed by the

evaluative question, and generally were able to answer the summary question as often as they were

able to correctly answer the literal comprehension questions. While building students’ ability to

understand the vocabulary and facts present in stories, Literacy Boost should also train

teachers and community volunteers to always engage students in active listening to

stimulate the development of students’ ability to summarize, infer, and evaluate what

they hear to prepare the students to ‘read to learn’ versus only ‘learning to read.’

Fluency and Accuracy

Fluency (words per minute read correctly) and accuracy (percent of the passage read correctly) are

presented together here because they are measured together in the oral reading passage sub-test. For

those students classified as readers, the number of words students read correctly in a minute is

tracked for fluency. As the student continues to read after the first minute, the total number of words read correctly from the passage as a whole, no matter how long it takes the student, is computed for

accuracy. This section presents this data for readers only15 in order to better understand the strengths

and weaknesses of students who can read a degree of connected text – as discussed earlier, a large

divergence exists between nonreaders and readers and thus averaging the scores of the two groups is

less meaningful than taking a closer look at the readers alone. And because so few readers exist among

grade 1 students, this section also only presents data for grade 2 students’ performance in Filipino.

Grade 2 Fluency

In grade 2 Filipino fluency, Ilonggo and Maguindanaoan groups outperform T’boli boys. Within the

T’boli language group, girls far outscore boys and are on par with the other language groups. Literacy

Boost should provide ample opportunities and, perhaps more importantly, ample amount

and variety of materials for readers to practice their reading and improve their

15

As opposed to including the zero scores of the nonreaders, which would lower the average scores for this data.

63%

36%

23% 23%

40%

23%

9% 19%

0%10%20%

30%

40%50%

60%

70%80%

90%

100%

G1 T'boli G1 Ilonggo G1Maguindanaoan

G2 Filipino

Figure 15: Frequency of Correct Answers to Comprehension Questions by Type

Literal

Deep


16.12.12 33

automaticity and speed. Special additional material may need to be provided that appeals

to T’boli boys in order to ensure they can keep pace with their peers.

Grade 2 Accuracy

In grade 2 Filipino accuracy, Maguindanaoan boys outscore all other groups, including Maguindanaoan

girls. Accuracy levels are fairly high among grade 2 readers, but room for improvement still exists and

Literacy Boost will need to not only give grade 2 readers the opportunity and materials to

practice reading on their own, but the opportunity to read with teachers and more

experienced readers and to observe their example so as to improve the accuracy of their

reading.

Reading Comprehension

Readers were asked the full list of ten comprehension questions (one summary question, six factual

comprehension questions, two inferential comprehension questions, and one evaluative question) after

reading as much of the passage as they could, for a measure of reading comprehension.

Grade 2

In grade 2 reading comprehension, the only group that scored statistically higher than the others were

the Ilonggo girls. However, their performance was still only slightly over one third of comprehension

questions correctly answered, and all other groups scored only about one fourth or less of

comprehension questions correctly answered. While grade 2 readers can read at a moderate

pace and read most of the words in a grade-level text accurately, they nevertheless

largely fail to comprehend what they are reading. This could be due to insufficient speed

or lack of vocabulary, but either way Literacy Boost should help readers practice engaging

with the meaning of the text by training teachers and community activity facilitators to

have readers predict the content of passages based on clues such as titles, pictures, and

key words as well as following up with questions and activities centered around the

meaning of the text, such as drawing a picture of the story.

Figure 16 compares students’ performance on literal versus deep comprehension questions. Students

barely scored higher on their literal understanding of the text than their deeper understanding of it.

Within the deep types of comprehension questions, students scored highest on the summary question,

much higher than on the literal comprehension questions. Performance on the evaluative question was

the poorest, followed by inferential questions. While these readers show the beginnings of

understanding the general idea within a text, they need more targeted practice and

activities as described above to be able to fully take in the details of the story and to

interact with the story on an inferential and evaluative level.


16.12.12 34

Multilevel Analysis: Relationships between Literacy Skills and Background

and Home Literacy Environment Variables

This section explores the relationships between Literacy skills and student background, home literacy environment, and school factors using multilevel regression analysis to account for the clustering of

students within schools. It should be noted that all of the relationships presented in this section are

purely correlational, and further data and analysis is needed to confirm causation. In many cases, the

Literacy Boost program can use this correlational evidence to test the effectiveness of attempting to

impact learning outcomes through a hypothesized causal relationship drawn from the correlational

evidence. At endline, analysis can explore whether this attempt successfully improved learning

outcomes and therefore better establish whether or not causation actually exists. All relationships

shown or mentioned in this section are statistically significant at the five percent level or higher. For

the full regression output of these models, refer to Appendices A and B.16

This section is split into the same six sub-sections as the earlier section testing comparability between

sample groups: Basic and Educational Student Background, Socio-economic Status, Children’s Time,

Health, School Environment, and Home Literacy Environment.

Basic and Educational Student Background

The relationship between sex and language and literacy skills was explored in an earlier section.

However, additional evidence suggests that grade 1 students perform worse on a couple of sub-tests

when tested in a language other than their mother tongue. Due to the diversity of languages spoken at

some schools, it was not always possible to assess children in their mother tongue, and thus 16% of

T’boli speakers, 2% of Ilonggo speakers, and 33% of Maguindanaoan speakers were assessed in a

language other than their mother tongue. The multilevel model suggests that in these cases, students

16

These models include not only the assessed students from intervention and control schools, but also a number of other Save the Children Basic Education Sponsorship schools.

26%

20%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Literal Deep

Figure 16: Frequency of Correct Answers to Reading Comprehension Questions by Type

(Grade 2)


16.12.12 35

scored 11 percentage points worse (1.2 questions worse) on the CAP sub-test, and 21 percentage

points worse (2 questions worse) on the listening comprehension sub-test. It is not possible to

separate whether these results occurred as a result of students’ skill deficiency in the

spoken or written language, but this is potential evidence for the importance of mother

tongue instruction as students learn their most foundational skills.

Family size was consistently negatively related to student literacy scores in grade 1 CAP, most used

words, and listening comprehension; as well as grade 2 CAP, likelihood of being a Filipino reader, and

Filipino accuracy. Figure 17 below shows this relationship for grade 1 CAP and oral comprehension.

With each additional three household members reported by the child, both CAP and listening

comprehension scores are predicted to be about one correctly answered question lower.

It may be that larger families are able to provide fewer resources and time for each individual child, or

family size may be a proxy indication of socio-economic status. In either case, Literacy Boost

programming should level the playing field by providing community activities where all

children can receive equal attention, time, and exposure to reading. If resources and

experienced readers are limited for Reading Buddies, perhaps those children from larger

families should be prioritized to be paired with experienced readers.

Socio-economic Status

Few direct indications of socio-economic status (SES) exhibited significant relationships with literacy

scores. However, one variable that perhaps serves as a proxy indication of SES, how children arrive at

school, did show a significant relationship with grade 2 Filipino most used word scores, likelihood of

being a Filipino reader, and Filipino reading comprehension. Children who walk to school (88%) versus

using another (improved mode) of transportation such as a passenger tricycle (6%) or motorized

vehicle (4%) score 2.5 most used words lower, are 10 percentage points less likely to be a reader, and

score almost one reading comprehension question lower than their peers who do not walk to school.

Literacy Boost programming should ensure that all children have access to community

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

2 4 6% o

f it

em

s co

rre

ctly

an

swe

red

# of Household Members

Figure 17: CAP and Listening Comprehension and Family Size

CAP

Listening Comp


16.12.12 36

activities, whether they are from relatively wealthier or poorer households, and

regardless of the distance students live from school.

Children’s Time

Many of the variables measuring children’s time were significantly related to literacy scores. Figure 18

shows that the more household chores that students report, the lower their predicted scores in

fluency.

Also in grade 2, children who report working outside the home have significantly lower scores in letter

knowledge and most used words. A similar relationship holds for grade 1 letters score and grade 2

likelihood of being a Filipino reader and Filipino accuracy. Conversely, in grade 1 students who report

studying every day versus less than every day are predicted to score two more most used words

correct. This suggests that students’ work and chore responsibilities may detract from

their ability to study or spend time in activities that reinforce literacy skill development. Thus, Literacy Boost should both carefully schedule community activities such that all

students can conveniently attend even if they have large work or chore loads, as well as


suggesting strategies for integrating literacy-development activities into work and chores,

such as singing.

Health

The only individual health variable that was significantly associated with student literacy scores was the

size of students’ breakfast on the day of assessment. For grade 1, for each additional breakfast item

eaten in the morning, grade 1students were predicted to score about five percentage points higher on

their letters and over one more most used word correct. Grade 2 students were predicted to be six

percentage points more likely to be a Filipino reader and read five percentage points more words of

the passage (however, the relationship with reading comprehension was strangely negative). Save the

Children programming in basic education and school health and nutrition should remind parents

34

28 26

15

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Chores less thaneveryday

Chores everydaybefore school

Chores everydayafter school

Chores everydaybefore & after

school

wo

rds

read

co

rre

ctly

pe

r m

inu

te

Figure 18: Grade 2 Fluency and Chore Load


16.12.12 37

about the importance of ensuring their children eat a nutritious breakfast to be better

prepared to learn throughout the day.

School Environment

One of the most consistent positive relationships between school-level variables and literacy scores

was the existence of a school management committee (SMC: 34% with versus 66% without). In

addition to the relationships shown in Figure 19, schools with SMCs were significantly associated with

nearly one additional CAP question correct, 10 percentage points more letters correct, and 2.5 more

most used words correct in grade 1 and eight more Filipino words read correctly per minute in grade

2. Literacy Boost can use this as evidence to advocate for the creation of additional SMCs

where there are none to see if this additional level of support from parents leads to

higher reading skills development. It can also look to the SMCs an important target of

capacity building efforts that will enable them to assume responsibility for community

Literacy Boost activities to promote enhanced sustainability of the program.

Finally, the total number of teacher transfers in the school year was negatively associated with grade 2

Filipino fluency and accuracy – for every additional teacher transferred during the year, Filipino fluency

scores were predicted to be 1.5 words per minute lower and Filipino accuracy scores 2 percentage

points lower. This last finding may be evidence of the importance of training all primary

teachers within a school to ensure that students’ exposure to Literacy Boost enhanced

instruction of the five reading skills is not interrupted by teacher transfer.

Home Literacy Environment

Finally, in terms of children’s home literacy environment (HLE) the print available in students’

households and students’ own literacy habits were significantly associated with higher literacy scores.

For print in the household in grade 1, Figure 20 shows that children who report having storybooks in

the household are predicted to score significantly higher on CAP and listening comprehension sub-

tests.

63%

48%

33%

85%

73% 72%

47%

92%

0%10%

20%

30%40%

50%60%

70%

80%90%

100%

Letters MUW Likelihood of BeingReader

Accuracy

% it

em

s co

rre

ct

Figure 19: Grade 2 Letters, MUW, Likelihood of Being Reader, and Accuracy and SMC

No SMC

SMC


16.12.12 38

In addition, in grade 1 every additional type of print reported in the household is associated with nearly

one additional most used word correct on that sub-test. For grade 2, every additional type of print

reported in the household is associated with an additional one half an additional CAP question correct,

an additional 5.6 Filipino letters correct, an additional six percentage points of the Filipino passage

correctly read, and an additional 0.4 Filipino reading comprehension questions correct.

Interestingly, in grade 2 it is not stories but religious texts that represent the specific type of print

associated with higher literacy skills. The presence of religious texts is associated with an additional

three Filipino letters correct, an additional 1.5 most used words correct, an additional eight percentage

points in likelihood of being a Filipino reader, and an additional 0.4 listening comprehension questions

correct. More information is needed to understand which types of text are more likely to be written in

mother tongue or Filipino, but in any case Literacy Boost should enhance children’s access to

storybooks, religious texts, and a variety of types of print in general through Book Banks

and materials creation.

In both grades 1 and 2, children reporting having read to family or community members in the past

week have significantly higher scores in a number of sub-tests. Figure 21 presents these relationships

for grade 1; in grade two reporting having read to others in the past week was significantly associated

with an additional CAP question correct, an additional three letters correct, and an additional 0.7

listening comprehension questions correct. Literacy Boost should encourage children to

develop their reading habits outside of school by providing level-appropriate and

enjoyable reading materials through Book Banks and materials creation as well as

structured opportunities to read through Reading Camps, Reading Buddies, and Read-a-

Thons.

23% 25%

34%

43%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

CAP Listening Comp

% it

em

s co

rre

ct

Figure 20: Grade 1 CAP and Listening Comprehsion and Presence of Stories in the Household

No Stories

Stories


16.12.12 39

Conclusion

This report details a first look at grade 1 and grade 2 students in rural South-Central Mindanao and will

serve as an important basis for informing Literacy Boost programming and a foundation for conducting

an endline impact analysis of the program. For endline, important variables to be controlled for include

types of interventions implemented in schools, school infrastructure, the presence of SMCs, and types

of print reported in the home by children.

Important considerations for Literacy Boost programing include the linguistic diversity of children in schools and deficiencies in blackboard quality, school libraries, and SMCs. In the household, Literacy

Boost programing should address the lack of variety of reading materials and low frequency of

household literacy habits practiced by other household members. Specifically, Literacy Boost

programming should:

accommodate the diversity of different language speakers in schools, ensuring that all

teacher training content, community action activities, and any print materials

developed are equally relevant to the different linguistic groups

provide posters and other instructional and visual aids as well as helping teachers construct their own materials for a print-rich classroom environment in which

teachers have legible assets from which to teach students

establish Book Banks where children can borrow a variety of engaging, skill level-

appropriate print

offer material creation and community activities that allow all students access to storybooks, coloring books, newspapers, magazines, etc

provide household members, especially parents, with information about the value of

telling stories, singing, and playing games with their children and suggestions for how

to do so via the Community Strategies for Enhancing Literacy flipbook and parental

awareness workshops

Overall, students performed poorly on their foundational literacy skills. Both grade 1 and 2 students

could not answer a majority of the concepts about print questions correctly. Students in both grades

23%

41%

18% 25%

36%

54%

32% 31%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

CAP Letters MUW Listening Comp

% it

em

s co

rre

ct

Figure 21: Grade 1 CAP, Letters, MUW, and Listening Comprehension and Having Read to Others in the Past Week

Did not read to others

Read to others


16.12.12 40

also exhibit large deficiencies in letter knowledge and low scores on the most-used words sub-test.

Given these findings, Literacy Boost should:

increase students’ access to print through materials creation, Book Banks, Reading Buddies, and Reading Camps involving activities where students can actually practice

handling books, especially storybooks, themselves and to learn from the example of

experienced readers

build on children’s existing letter knowledge and address the largely unknown letters

focus on letters and phonological awareness through the teacher training, community

action, and material creation such as alphabet posters and make-and-take letters

give teachers the training and tools to help students apply their knowledge of letters and phonics to build their decoding skills. This should be reinforced through Reading

Camp activities that emphasize practicing letters and reading basic words

Due to this lack of foundational skills, nearly all grade 1 students and two-thirds of grade 2 students

failed to read connected text with sufficient fluency or accuracy to be considered a reader (unable to

read at least five words correctly in 30 seconds). These nonreaders scored very poorly on listening

comprehension, suggesting underdevelopment of these skills. In general, a stark divergence between

readers and nonreaders exists across a variety of skills, especially reading of most-used words and

connected text. Given these findings, Literacy Boost should:

encourage teachers, Reading Camp facilitators, and parents to read or tell more stories to students in class, during Reading Camps, or at home

encourage family and community members to engage students in conversation, active

listening, and other listening comprehension activities throughout the day as

suggested by the Community Strategies for Enhancing Literacy flipbook

provide for more exposure to spoken Filipino through activities such as story time

bridge the gap between readers and nonreaders through activities like Reading

Buddies

Looking to the subset of grade 2 Filipino readers, students exhibited decent reading fluency and

accuracy. However, their reading comprehension scores barely exceed one quarter of reading

comprehension questions correctly answered, suggesting that students may lack a sufficient command

of Filipino language skills (especially vocabulary), speed, or both in order to understand the text from

which they are able to read the vast majority of words. Given these findings, Literacy Boost

should:

help give students more engaging opportunities and materials to practice their Filipino

vocabulary and other oral language skills as well as to practice reading Filipino texts in

order to increase their fluency and ultimately their reading comprehension

train teachers and community activity facilitators to engage in active reading with



read to


16.12.12 41

train teachers and community volunteers to engage students in active listening and

deeper engagement with reading texts to stimulate the development of students’

ability to summarize, infer, and evaluate what they hear to prepare the students to

‘read to learn’ versus merely ‘learning to read’

Multilevel Regression Analysis

Testing the relationship between students’ background, school characteristics, and HLE against literacy

scores revealed that children performed significantly better in many sub-tests when tested in their

mother tongue. This is further evidence for the importance of mother tongue instruction as

students learn their most foundational skills. Children with larger families consistently scored

lower on a variety of sub-tests, as did children who reported a large chore or work load. Children

who reported eating breakfast the morning of the assessment scored higher than those who did not

eat breakfast. The lack of an SMC and a high number of teacher transfers were negatively associated

with literacy scores. Finally, the variety of print available in students’ households and children’s reports

of having read to family or community members in the past week were significantly associated with

higher literacy scores. Given these findings, Literacy Boost programming should:

ensure that all children can receive equal attention, time, and exposure to reading

through community activities

consider prioritizing those children from larger families should be prioritized to be paired with experienced readers if resources and experienced readers are limited for

Reading Buddies

carefully schedule community activities such that all students can conveniently attend

even if they have large work or chore loads


suggesting strategies for integrating literacy-development activities into work and

chores, such as singing

Save the Children programming in basic education and school health and nutrition

should remind parents about the importance of ensuring their children eat a nutritious

breakfast to be better prepared to learn throughout the day

use the findings about SMCs as evidence to advocate for the creation of additional SMCs where there are none to see if this additional level of support from parents leads

to higher reading skills development

look to the SMCs an important target of capacity building efforts that will enable them

to assume responsibility for community activities to promote enhanced sustainability

of the program

where possible, train all primary teachers within a school to ensure that students’ exposure to Literacy Boost enhanced instruction of the five reading skills is not

interrupted by teacher transfer

enhance children’s access to a variety of types of print through Book Banks and

materials creation

encourage children to develop their reading habits outside of school by providing level-

appropriate and enjoyable reading materials through Book Banks and materials

creation as well as structured opportunities to read through Reading Camps, Reading

Buddies, and Read-a-Thons


16.12.12 42

Appendix A: Final Grade 1 Stepwise Multilevel Model (using p<=0.2)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

VARIABLES CAP Letters MUW >0 MUW Reader Listening Comp.

Sex (1=Female) 0.0913*** -0.325~ 0.0738* -0.338**

Speaks T’boli*Sex 0.0227

0.261 -0.0530~ 0.365**

Speaks Ilonggo at home

0.148*** 0.105**

-0.207***

Speaks Ilonggo*Sex 0.0729***

0.408* -0.0531** 0.380**

Speaks Maguindanaoan at home

0.127~ 0.133*

-0.182**

Speaks Maguindanaoan*Sex

0.444* -0.0872** 0.358**

Speaks other language*Sex

0.123 0.422~ -0.0726~ 0.341**

G1 student not assessed in home language -0.109*** -0.0531

-0.136~

-0.205***

Attended Kindergarten

0.104***

Wall made of bamboo 0.0695** -0.0457

-0.0576~ Wall made of wood 0.0562*

-0.0417* 0.0402*

Wall made of cement

-0.0789* -0.0936** -0.0752~ -0.0878** Floor made of earth

0.113*

0.112*

0.148**

Floor made of bamboo

0.0861*

-0.0237 0.204***

Floor made of wood

-0.0578*

0.157***

Floor made of cement 0.0489~ 0.116*

0.0574* 0.196***

works before school 0.0356

0.0583* Misses school because of work 0.0370 -0.0610

0.1000

0.101***

Works sometimes/everyday & chores everyday

-0.0668*

-0.0962* Studies Everyday

0.0554~ 0.0916** 0.119*

0.0388

Has Stories in Household 0.104*** 0.0577

0.152**

0.176*

Number of reading materials at Home

0.0367**

-0.0554~

Exchanges books w others -0.0711** -0.0490 -0.0537 Reads to others 0.126*** 0.130*** 0.139*** 0.153***

0.0644**

Number of Household Members -0.0323***

-0.0209*

-0.0339***

% of Hhold members seen reading

-0.0404 -0.0822**

% of Hhold members helping study

-0.0564*

% of Hhold members reading to student

0.0624

0.0590* 0.0736**

% of Hhold members telling story to student 0.0266

-0.0935* Size of Breakfast

0.0507** 0.0673*** 0.0991***

School has headmaster office 0.0840** 0.194***

0.0540

School has electricity -0.0812**

0.0501 School has water point

0.120*

-0.0244

School treats water

-0.101** -0.108* School has latrine for students

-0.107*

-0.0357~

School latrine is clean 0.108**

0.165***

0.0982*

School has hand washing station -0.0490

0.137** School hand washing station has soap -0.0790* -0.0732 -0.154**

0.0444** -0.0894**

School has library

-0.0910* -0.0553

0.0468~

Total # of teacher transfers this year 0.00895* School feeds students

0.113**

0.0427

School has SMC 0.0570** 0.102* 0.131*** 0.201*** 0.0244 Classroom blackboard is legible

-0.0525

0.0429** -0.0423

Constant 0.233*** 0.0130 -0.148* -0.157* 0.0717 0.250**

Observations 711 711 711 711 711 682

R-squared 0.317 0.212 0.196 0.175 0.078 0.466

*** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, ~ p<0.1


16.12.12 43

Appendix B: Final Grade 2 Stepwise Multilevel Model (using p<=0.2) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

VARIABLES CAP Letters MUW >0 MUW Reader Listening Comp. Fluency Accuracy Reading Comp.

Sex (1=Female) 0.0529** 0.335** 0.409*** 0.397*** 0.0716* 32.62*** 0.0599

tbolisex

-0.253* -0.330** -0.351***

-12.75 Speaks Ilonggo at home 0.0498* 0.137** 0.140* 0.156* 0.127*

17.93***

ilonggosex

-0.202~ -0.297** -0.345***

0.0519* -28.61*** -0.0564 0.0652*

Speaks Maguindanaoan at home

0.136~ 0.244* 0.202~ 0.176

21.05** 0.128* maguindanaoansex

-0.255* -0.435*** -0.407*** -0.175*

-32.05*** -0.158**

Does not speak T'boli, Ilonggo, or Maguindanaoan at home

0.143~

0.139* othermtsex

-0.212

0.404**

0.0957*

Student Walks to school

-0.0597~ -0.121* -0.117* -0.102**

-0.0662*

Attended ECD/Preschool

0.0664

0.109**

-9.605* -0.152** 0.130

Attended Daycare -0.0677**

0.0986 0.120* -0.0499**

0.0510 -0.195**

Attended Kindergarten

0.0285

0.0902*

5.595**

-0.181**

Has Repeated a Grade 0.0597** 0.0468~ 0.0907~ 0.0865~

-0.0543 Wall made of bamboo 0.0449* -0.0345

7.104~

0.0875***

Wall made of cement 0.0846**

0.0859~

21.01*** 0.0757~ 0.0682

Floor made of earth

0.0424* -5.892 -0.0736* Floor made of bamboo

-0.0594

-0.0772**

Floor made of wood

-9.287* -0.153* -0.0683~

Floor made of cement

-12.26* -0.0708~ 0.0693~

Works Everyday or Sometimes -0.0380~ -0.0843*** -0.163*** -0.124*** -0.118** 0.105***

0.119*

works before school

0.108

-0.170*** 9.846*

0.0936~

works after school

-0.0869** Misses school because of work 0.0596

0.0760~

-0.0888*

Does Chores Everyday

5.440* 0.0762* chores before school

-11.81** -0.0801*

chores after school -0.0351~ -0.0479~ -0.0813* -0.0585

-0.0332 -13.25*** -0.0959** Misses school because of chore

-0.0448 -0.0960*

0.0927*

Works sometimes/everyday & chores everyday

6.880* 0.159*** -0.122**

Studies Everyday

0.0521~

-0.0790* 0.0826~

Number of Household Possessions 0.0198* 0.0182~ 0.0316~ Constant 0.263** 0.626*** 0.476*** 0.615*** 0.610*** -0.00405 34.26*** 1.265*** 0.0658

Observations 754 754 754 754 754 508 246 246 246

R-squared 0.251 0.233 0.245 0.204 0.214 0.264 0.367 0.395 0.453

*** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, ~ p<0.1


16.12.12 44

Appendix B Continued: Final Grade 2 Stepwise Multilevel Model (using p<=0.2) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

VARIABLES CAP Letters MUW >0 MUW Reader Listening Comp. Fluency Accuracy Reading Comp.

Has Textbooks in Household -0.0610* -0.123**

-0.104

0.0489*

-0.0685*

Has Stories in Household

-0.183**

-0.177

0.0745*

-0.149~ Has Religious Books in Household 0.0374~ 0.0590* 0.0763*

0.0816* 0.0381** 3.189

0.0517~

Number of reading materials at Home 0.0539*** 0.101**

0.107*

0.0565* 0.0363*

Exchanges books w others -0.0450~

0.0549 -0.0484* -5.959* Reads to others 0.0992*** 0.0608*

0.0658~

0.0709**

-0.0450

Number of Household Members -0.0146*

-0.0300**

-0.0360* % of Hhold members helping study 0.0752*

Ate breakfast this morning 0.0768*

-0.116

0.197**

Size of Breakfast

0.0569*

0.0543** -0.0514*

Says water is safe and reports good method 0.0862

0.0877~

0.189**

Distance to nearest district center in km

-0.00230*

-0.00348~

-0.276* Distance to nearest paved road in km -0.00293*** -0.00216 -0.00651** -0.00772*** -0.00800** -0.00171* -0.542*** -0.00972***

School has headmaster office -0.0935**

-0.0627* 6.069 0.189* 0.126***

School has electricity 0.0631*

0.0490*

-0.0987* School has water point 0.109***

0.0862**

0.112**

School has latrines for student use

-0.0555

-0.115* 0.0402

0.0518

School latrines are generally clean

0.0663*

-0.183** School has hand washing station

-0.0998

-0.0408~ 11.76*

-0.144***

School hand washing station has soap

-13.91* -0.0732~ 0.112***

School has library -0.0446

-0.143** -0.0398~ -9.625***

0.0851~

Total # of teacher transfers this year

-1.532** -0.0214* School feeds students 0.0591*

0.147~ 0.136~ 0.0441

-0.0798*

Classroom has ventilation -0.0659

-0.128 -0.202* -0.244*

-0.0829* School has SMC

0.104* 0.240*** 0.221** 0.143*

8.201*** 0.0716*

Classroom blackboard is legible

-8.028** Constant 0.263** 0.626*** 0.476*** 0.615*** 0.610*** -0.00405 34.26*** 1.265*** 0.0658

Observations 754 754 754 754 754 508 246 246 246

R-squared 0.251 0.233 0.245 0.204 0.214 0.264 0.367 0.395 0.453

*** p<0.001, ** p<0.01, * p<0.05, ~ p<0.1

literacy boost philippines: mindanao baseline report 2012

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