Words Can Change Worlds: An impact evaluation of Shine Literacy

The recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality reports painted a dire picture of South Africa’s literacy situation: 80% of Grade 4 learners were rendered unable to read for meaning and 27% of Grade 6 learners as functionally illiterate. These results need to be contextualized against the extensive public spending that is incurred on education. Though it appears that learners are in school, they do not seem to be learning, a phenomenon encountered repeatedly in the developing world. The production process of educational outputs is often being hidden in the black box. With a large body of research confirming how reading literacy holds predictive validity for later child development and academic success, Shine Literacy offers an intervention that is set at lower primary school level and is intended as a swift corrective measure for those who struggle to read early on. This dissertation conducted a quasi-experimental impact evaluation by estimating the treatment effect of Shine Literacy via difference-in-differences and propensity score matching. By using the available data which included (1) Shine’s diagnostic test scores, (2) attendance data and (3) Grade 3 Systemic test score data obtained from the Western Cape Department of Education, the estimation procedures arrived at average treatment effects ranging between 0.6 to 1.9 standard deviations. IsiXhosa and “At risk” learners capture the largest test score improvements, and therefore are the main beneficiaries of the programme. This renders Shine Literacy as an extremely valuable input in the production of better literacy and thereby better schooling outcomes. It helps those at the bottom end of the distribution. Furthermore, positive impact on Systemic Mathematics test scores was found as well, confirming the predictive power of literacy on numeracy repeatedly discussed in the literature