Literacy rates in Sub-Saharan Africa remain low, despite increased primary school enrollment. In rural Mozambique, only 3% of children possess grade-level reading skills. Poor learning outcomes in lower grades are a barrier to further expanding school enrollment at higher grade levels. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores whether a teacher training program and reading camps could improve literacy levels among elementary school children.
- Marianne Stein
"There is a learning crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. Around 80 to 90% of the kids who are attending primary school are not proficient in reading. Mozambique is a particularly critical case, because the country has very low levels of literacy and overall human capital, even compared with the region in general," said study co-author Catalina Herrera-Almanza, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at Illinois. She conducted the research in cooperation with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and colleagues at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Universidade Pedagodica Maputo in Mozambique.
Teacher training has been shown to improve student outcomes, but comprehensive training programs are costly and difficult to conduct at a large scale; therefore, the researchers aimed to evaluate the impact of lighter programs that are more affordable and easier to scale up.
"We cooperated with World Vision, a non-governmental organization that runs educational programs in Mozambique. They were interested in exploring if a 'light touch' teacher training intervention could be effective, and whether its effects would be enhanced if it was supplemented with reading camps outside of the school," Herrera-Almanza said.
The study included 160 elementary schools in Mozambique's rural Nampula province, randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the first group, teachers in grades one through three received five days of training in the Unlock Literacy program - which focuses on core reading skills - as well as teaching materials in Portuguese and Emakhuwa, the local language. The second treatment group received the Unlock Literacy training, and students were encouraged to attend reading camps conducted weekly by community volunteers outside of school. The third group served as a control group that received no assistance.
The researchers evaluated children's test scores on the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) for elementary school students. They compared test scores between children in each intervention group and the control group after two years of the program.
Furthermore, they conducted surveys with teachers, principals, school administrators, and a subset of 10 students from each school.
Overall, they found very little effect of either training program on reading scores. For both the light-touch training only and the combined program, there was a small positive effect for the lowest-scoring children, as fewer students received scores of zero on some reading measures.
Herrera-Almanza says one reason for the results could be lack of compliance with the training. The surveys showed that teachers only completed two of the five days in the program, on average.
"It's possible the lack of incentives for teachers, and a lack of supervision, resulted in low interest to attend. These teachers also move around a lot and typically stay at a school only for a few years, and training may not be a priority for them," Herrera-Almanza noted.
The reading camps had better turnout. They were implemented in most of the communities and about half of the students participated regularly. The camps were run by a volunteer, often a high school student, but they were supported by a teacher at the school, who helped with teaching and encouraged students to attend. World Vision also provided print materials. The idea was to encourage children to read through games, activities, and stories.
The researchers concluded that light touch training is not sufficient to make a substantial difference in literacy levels.
"It's difficult to disentangle the results because the teacher training was not implemented as we expected. There is also the fact that Mozambique has very low literacy levels, so it is harder to move the needle," Herrera-Almanza stated.
"We do find weak effects for the bottom part of the distribution with the combination of teacher training and out-of-classroom support, and that is valuable. But our findings indicate that more intensive school and community interventions are required to meaningfully improve learning outcomes."
The paper, "The effect of teacher training and community literacy programming on teacher and student outcomes," is published in the Journal of Development Economics [DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103578].
The research was supported by World Vision, funded by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant no. FFE-656-2019/018-00-IFPRI.
