Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
27
The impact and benefits gained
Children in the “full” treatment group achieved better results in every section of the EGRA test
compared to the control group. In fact the effects were found to be spectacular compared to
the scale of impact found in general in social science research.
The “full” treatment effect of EGRA PLUS was found to be 2 years in reading comprehension
and 1.8 years in listening comprehension. The effect of the “light” treatment remained small
compared to the “full” treatment and was mostly on letter fluency and phonemic awareness
rather than reading or listening comprehension.
Compared to the baseline in the final test in “full” treatment schools letter naming fluency
increased by 59.2 percent while in the “light” treatment schools letter naming fluency
increased by 46.0 percent and in the control schools letter naming fluency increased by 35.9
percent.
The effects were particularly high for reading comprehension for the “full” treatment schools.
“Full” treatment schools increased their scores by 130.1 percent compared to the baseline as
opposed to a 33.4 percent increase in “light” treatment schools and 32.9 percent increase in
control schools.
(Piper & Korda, 2011)