Northern Uganda Literacy Program
Since 2009, Mango Tree and Ichuli have been implementing the NULP to address the complex challenge of early grade reading. Mango Tree was founded in Uganda in 2000 with the intention of increasing the number of quality of resources available to rural schoolteachers while simultaneously generating local employment. The goal was to create educational tools and products that made learning both fun and effective, and that were easy to implement, focusing on local languages. The project is implemented in the Lango sub-region covering eight districts and Lira Municipality.
After a successful pilot randomized control trial impact evaluation in 2013, the program scaled up in 2014 through additional funding from existing and new donors. The scale up began in 2014 with 128 primary schools involved.
Research Design
Our experiment is an impact evaluation that measures the effects of the literacy intervention on learning outcomes. We study 128 schools, which were randomly assigned to either the full treatment, a half-program that includes the materials but where the training is provided through government-employed coordinating center tutors, or a control group. Outcomes are to be measured principally in terms of improvements in Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and Early Grade Writing Assessment (EGWA) scores.
The original study followed 38 schools for one year, 2013, focusing solely on P1. In the expanded study, we follow 128 schools (including the first 38) for up to five years, 2013 to 2017, following students from P1 all the way up to P3. We have an additional sample of 30 pure control schools originally sampled that we plan on collecting outcomes near the end of the study.
