International Literacy Day is a yearly recurring event aiming to increase awareness of the importance of literacy worldwide, and this year’s iteration is a special one: it marks the 50th anniversary of this day. It is being celebrated with the slogan: reading the past, writing the future.
Too many still lack the basic skills of reading and writing
There are 758 million adults around the world still illiterate (GEM Report 2016) of which the majority are women, and many live in GPE partner countries.
The USAID-funded event "Future Directions: Innovations, Tools, and Resources for Global Literacy", organized by the Global Reading Network at the US Institute for Peace tomorrow, one day after ILD, is an important opportunity to reflect on this challenge.
More practically, it seeks to explore how the international education development community can support increased literacy worldwide.
I will participate in the event on behalf of the GPE Secretariat, and argue for the importance of a concerted partnership effort to eradicate illiteracy worldwide.
Literacy is context-dependent
Since the 1970s, literacy has been considered more than just reading. It was extended to include basic arithmetic skills – also referred to as numeracy – to form the concept of functional literacy. In the 1990s with the rise of information and communication technology (ICT), it also included digital literacy. And more recently, the concept was further broadened to include media and information literacy (MIL).
Measuring learning to improve literacy
According to our philosophy, measurement of learning is a crucial element in this battle, as remedial intervention can best be targeted based on quality data on where deficiencies are located, and what form they take.
So far, GPE has supported this work mainly through its implementation grants, with over half of 34 active grants as of June 2016 supporting elements of assessment of learning.
This work includes activities in the partner countries, such as: classroom based assessments (tool development and training); conducting national sample-based assessment; support for analysis, publication and use of learning outcomes data; development of a national assessment framework; and capacity building, for example in item development and test administration.
But this is not the only way in which GPE supports the fight against illiteracy: its results framework, which underpins the partnership’s monitoring and evaluation strategy, includes four indicators that seek to leverage learning and its measurements.
Four indicators to measure literacy
One indicator, developed in collaboration with UNICEF, assesses proportion of partner countries showing improvement on learning outcomes in basic education. Another one, based on World Bank’s SABER methodology, assesses the proportion of partner countries with a quality learning assessment systems. Yet another captures the proportion of grants supporting EMIS/learning assessment systems; and, finally, another indicator looks at achieving targets in GPE’s funding model performance indicators on equity, efficiency and… learning.
As next steps, GPE seeks to systematize its strategies for measuring and improving learning across its partner countries. This includes a suite of work streams, with first, support to diagnostics of national learning assessment systems and evidence-based strategies to address weaknesses; and, second, capacity building and knowledge sharing through regional assessment networks, such as the Asia-based NEQMAP
For full participation in societies around the world, literacy is key - even more so in a world as increasingly complex as the one we inhabit.
This not only benefits citizens, who are able to enjoy the advantages of society – but it also benefits societies, as they can flourish to their full extent only once they take advantage of the full spectrum of talents present within them. Talents that only literacy can completely unlock.