Grade 2 Early Grade Literacy Skills (EGLS) Assessment: 2024-25

Scaling up Early Reading Intervention (SERI) Program

Scope of Work for

External Agency Hiring

Organizational Overview

Founded in 2000 on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®, Room to Read is creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality through education. We are achieving this goal by helping children in historically low-income communities develop literacy skills and a habit of reading, and by supporting girls as they build life skills to succeed in school and negotiate key life decisions. We collaborate with governments and other partner organizations to deliver positive outcomes for children at a scale. Room to Read has benefited more than 39 million children and has worked in 23 countries and in more than 182,000 communities, providing additional support through remote solutions that facilitate learning beyond the classroom. Room to Read aims to benefit 40 million children by 2025. 

Room to Read India was established in 2003 and presently has programs in twelve states – Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi NCR, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.  We aim to make available educational opportunities and resources to more disadvantaged children in our mission to break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy one child at a time.

Project Background

Since 2015, Room to Read in partnership with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been implementing Scaling up Early Reading Interventions (SERI) project on a scaffold approach of ‘I Do – We Do – You Do’ across states of Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh. The program aims to demonstrate district-wide and state-wide foundational literacy gains among children through a comprehensive literacy intervention. Room to Read’s Comprehensive Literacy Approach focuses on eight key components, i.e., oral language development, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, writing and independent reading time (IRT). The process involves teacher training for Grades 1 to 2, on structured instruction delivery and providing children access to good children’s literature/ reading materials to develop a habit of reading.  This approach, along with effective teacher capacity building and a robust monitoring system will help children to develop foundational literacy skills by the end of Grade 2. Hence, the overarching objective of current program is to improve foundational literacy outcomes of Grade 1-2 children by (a) improving engagement of children with quality reading materials; (b) enhancing capacity of teachers and Complex Head Teacher (CHT) to implement comprehensive literacy program. 

As part of this approach, SERI had demonstrated the effectiveness of the Room to Read model of Foundational Literacy across the four states through direct implementation/I Do / We Do approach (mostly through leveraged funds). Further, in one district across each of these states Room to Read has worked closely with the respective governments to scale up the model across all schools of the district through the partnership mode/ We Do approach. An important addition to SERI in 2022-23 is the program expansion in Telangana. Following in-depth discussions with the state and district governments, a We Do approach has been approved for district-wide expansion of Literacy Program in four of the 33 districts in Telangana. In this state, SERI will execute both the We-Do and You-Do approaches simultaneously.

Therefore, to measure the foundational literacy skills under We Do Approach in Telangana, an Early Grade Literacy Skills assessment of end of Grade 2 children in Telugu language will be undertaken. The assessment will be undertaken in Adilabad, Asifabad, Mancherial, and Nirmal districts of Telangana and will be carried out by the selected external agency. The following sections describe the methodology and sampling, role of agency, key deliverables and timelines for agency.

Requirements and Evaluation Criteria for Technical proposal

• Organization with at least 5 years of experience in the field of education. Experience in foundational literacy assessments will be preferred.
• Individual technical proposals will not be accepted for this study.
• Technical proposals should not be more than 10 to 12 pages. The technical proposals must be submitted as per the prescribed format in Annex A below.

The technical proposals will be evaluated based on the following (but not limited to):  (a) experience in education field/similar domain and conducting similar studies; (b) suggested study team, including data collectors, supervisors, other technical members; along with their qualification and experience; (c) understanding of the scope of work; (d) training and data collection plan; (e) process and steps of data quality assurance, including data quality measures taken during the trainings for selection of the data collectors, data collection monitoring, troubleshooting mechanisms etc.; (f) timelines of sub-activities as per main activities 

HOW TO APPLY

Proposals are invited from the interested agency for the above assignment and the last date for receiving the proposal is 23^rd Oct 2024 at procurement.india@roomtoread.org  [do not copy anyone from RtR]

Kindly submit two separate emails with the following subject lines:

o EMAIL (1): TECHNICAL PROPOSAL – Grade 2 (EGLS) Assessment: 2024-25

o EMAIL (2): FINANCIAL PROPOSAL – Grade 2 (EGLS) Assessment: 2024-25

Submission terms:

• All agencies are advised to thoroughly review the SoW ToR before applying.
• Technical and Financial proposals are to be shared in two different emails separately and not in a single email (mandatory)
• Incomplete applications or deviations from the prescribed process will result in automatic rejection.
• Proposals received after the prescribed deadline will not be considered.
• Only shortlisted agencies will be contacted and may be requested for face-to-face/online interaction/presentation.

For queries, please contact:

Vivek Shrawat

vivek.shrawat@roomtoread.org

To download the full SoW, click here

Tags Children and Childcare Education and Education Technology (edtech)