Education for All or Literacy for All? Evaluating Student Outcomes from Save the Children’s Literacy Boost Program in Sub-Saharan Africa

This chapter reflects upon how Literacy Boost, a program based on findings from mainly developed world literature, functions when it is placed in the SSA context. The data come directly from schools in three countries in SSA. We first describe Literacy Boost and outline the research upon which Literacy Boost was designed. We then summarize briefly the research on two of the dimensions of equity which Literacy Boost seeks to address: the achievement gap between the sexes and the poor access to reading resources experienced by children in rural, developing world settings. Using multivariate regression analysis, we find that Literacy Boost overall had significant positive impact on the reading skills of students. However, for groups that are traditionally disadvantaged (e.g., girls or those with poor access to reading resources), we find no differential impact of Literacy Boost. We consider the implications of using developed world research in developing world settings and examine the implications for future practice in literacy programming across the continent. We then turn back to the literature and reflect on how well research findings from the developed world apply to the developing world, as well as how applicable our own findings are across the sub-Saharan region.