Measuring the outcomes of a literacy programme in no-fee schools in Cape Town

South African Journal of Childhood Education

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Measuring the outcomes of a literacy programme in no-fee schools in Cape Town
 
Creator Zuma, Mlungisi Boodhoo, Adiilah Louw-Potgieter, Joha
 
Subject Programme Evaluation; Literacy programmes; No-fee schools literacy programme; no-fee schools; outcome evaluation; reading rooms; teacher attributes; theory evaluation
Description Background: Most funders require non-governmental organisations to evaluate the effectiveness of their programmes. However, in our experience, funders seldom fund evaluation endeavours and organisational staff often lack evaluation skills.Aim: In this outcome evaluation of Living through Learning’s (LTL) class-based English-medium Coronation Reading Adventure Room programme, we addressed two evaluation questions: whether Grade 1 learners who participated in the programme attained LTL’s and the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) literacy standards at the end of the programme and whether teacher attributes contributed to this improvement.Setting: The evaluation was conducted in 18 different no-fee schools in Cape Town. Participants comprised 1090 Grade 1 learners and 54 teachers.Methods: We used Level 2 (programme design and theory) and part of Level 4 (outcome) of an evaluation hierarchy to assess the effectiveness of the programme.Results: Evaluation results showed that most schools, except three, attained the 60% performance standard set by the LTL on all quarterly assessments. Most schools, except two, attained the 50% performance standard of the DBE for English first language on all quarterly assessments. We also found that in terms of teacher attributes, only teacher experience in literacy teaching was significant in predicting learner performance in literacy in the first term of school.Conclusion: We explain why our results should be interpreted with caution and make recommendations for future evaluations in terms of design, data collection and levels of evaluation.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Sonja Botha, Living Through Learning Salma Adams, Living Through Learning Masters' Need Scholarship, University of Cape Town Incentive Fund for Rated Researchers IFR150126113160, NRF.
Date 2019-11-07
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Original research with single-group quasi-experimental design
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajce.v9i1.677
 
Source South African Journal of Childhood Education; Vol 9, No 1 (2019); 12 pages 2223-7682 2223-7674
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/677/1309 https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/677/1308 https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/677/1310 https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/677/1307
 
Coverage Cape Town — Grade 1 learners
Rights Copyright (c) 2019 Mlungisi Zuma, Adiilah Boohoo, Joha Louw-Potgieter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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