About
Early grade reading
Fewer than half of Mozambican children complete primary school, and most of those who do graduate cannot read and write. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Vamos Ler! Program has strengthened the Mozambican government’s ability to ensure that students in Nampula and Zambézia can achieve grade level fluency and comprehension in their local language in the first cycle of primary education.
Challenge
The lack of teaching and learning materials in schools results in children completing primary school without being able to read and write. On top of this, the books that are in the schools are of low quality. The role of BlueTree was to ensure that there are high-quality affordable books in the schools in Mozambique.
Method
BlueTree provided a Book Supply Chain Assessment, analysing the capacity of the stakeholders within the book supply chain. This analysis concluded that the printing industry was inadequately developed. To increase the production of local printers, capacity building, and technical support were given to the local printing industry, including workshops and technical guidance on machine purchase. Local printing capacity increased by up to three times in two years, resulting in cost savings for printers and increased output capacity to one million books per month.
BlueTree provided technical advice on book specifications, resulting in cost savings for Vamos Ler! of 10-15%, more environmentally friendly production, improved quality, and up to 4% time savings by changing from Ultra Violet to laminating.
For quality assurance BTG also conducted routine quality assurance, monitoring of book production at the printer to ensure that the materials produced met industry standards.
Results
More than four million copies of Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs) for grades One and Two have been printed and distributed, including textbooks, exercise books, posters, teacher manuals, and scripted lessons plans, to 1950 schools.