Partnering with Government: Sharing Best Practices with Grenada

Since launching Room to Read’s teacher training, our Literacy Program has trained thousands of instructors across ten countries, guiding primary teachers with effective best practices.

This instructional component is having a large impact on children’s literacy skills and the numbers prove it. We compared our intervention to other programs, and found our average impact to be nearly 10 times greater than that of 70 other similarly-focused interventions. 

While we’re thrilled at these results, to truly tackle illiteracy around the world, we need to partner with governments to integrate these best practices into the classroom to support national curricula. One country where we’re doing just that is in Grenada through Room to Read Accelerator.  

By teaming up with the Grenada Ministry of Education, Human Resource Development and the Environment, and our local partner, GND Schools, Inc., we are able to share insight on teacher training and methods of measurement through the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). This partnership also enables us to bring a new and efficient mode of electronic data collection to Grenada by using Tangerine software via tablets.  

"Grenada currently doesn’t assess reading skills in the early grades using a standard measurement tool. So, by using this reading assessment on a yearly basis, Grenada will have a better understanding of how children in the early grades are doing when it comes to reading,” says Peter Cooper, Associate Director of Room to Read's Research, Monitoring and Evaluation.  

This collaboration not only gives us the chance to work with the government to improve literacy rates in Grenada, but also explore new, effective ways to partner with governments to drive systematic change.   

“This partnership is the first-of-its kind for Room to Read. It opens the door for future opportunities to provide technical assistance to governments when it comes to both EGRA and use of tablets for data collection,” says Cooper. 

More About Accelerator 

 
Room to Read Accelerator shares our expertise and resources with partner organizations through the training materials, workshops, periodic support and monitoring, and technical assistance. All of this is done to maximize the quality of implementation and, in turn, replicate our work in eradicating illiteracy through high quality instruction and learning materials. These projects typically run two to five years in length. Since its inception in January of 2015, Room to Read Accelerator has trained 14,000 people through partnerships in Indonesia, Jordan, and Grenada, as well as Tanzania, India, and Nepal, where we also offer direct program implementation. 

For more information about our Accelerator programs visit https://www.roomtoread.org/room-to-read-accelerator/.