Chapter 2: How Learners Gained and then Lost: The Importance of Sustaining Government Policies

This chapter discusses the lessons and recommendations from an impact evaluation of an emergent literacy intervention in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. This was an evaluation of the Strengthening Teaching of Early Language and Literacy in Grade R (STELLAR) program as it was integrated into the Grade R (Kindergarten equivalent) Emergent Literacy (ELIT) intervention in the Province. The evaluation took place from 2015 to 2018, with the training intervention taking place in 2016. The intervention was targeted at children in Grade R, the year before mandated formal schooling when children are four-years-old turning five by 30 June in the year of admission. The intervention sought to strengthen home language teaching in three languages with appropriate resources to improve language and literacy performance levels. Khulisa Management Services conducted the impact evaluation using a quasi-experimental methodology to determine the educational outcomes of this intervention. The evaluation found Grade R learners in 2016 (the intervention group) significantly outperformed Grade R learners in 2015 (the comparison group). However, in 2017, the intervention effect disappeared. While the initial achievement of learners was noted, without provincially mandated support to teachers post-July 2016, the intervention advantage appears to have been lost. A shift in provincial focus to Grade R mathematics in late 2016 into 2017 was noted by a few key stakeholders as a risk to the time spent on literacy in the classroom. The chapter provides lessons at both a programmatic and an evaluative methodology level.